Bottle Rocket

As Wes Anderson’s first film, ‘Bottle Rocket’ isn’t bad by any means, however, in comparison to the broader stroke of his work, it falls flat in a few areas. First of all, I’ll mention my largest problem with the film, and that’s how low the stakes are. Most of Anderson’s other movies have an almost fantastical element; Life Aquatic has the shark, Rushmore has the over the top plays, Moonrise Kingdom has the storm of epic proportions, etc. However, Bottle Rocket doesn’t have an element that comes even close to that level of excitement. Sure, the characters are all individually interesting, but when the plot doesn’t give us a reason to care about the outcome of the event, the movie begins to drag. Being that it was only an hour and a half, I was honestly surprised at how much the movie seemed to drag. Don’t get me wrong, there were certainly exciting scenes that moved at a fast pace, but pacing isn’t my problem. Partially, this lack of movement is likely due to the small budget the movie had, 7 million USD. Aside from that, the movie’s also quite forgettable. It has admittedly been a while since I watched it, but I barely remembered most of it, which I would also likely source back to the low stakes. On the more positive side, however, the film does do a lot of unique things, which I think is what sets it apart from other generic heist movies. One of the first things is the language barrier between Luke Wilson’s character and the hotel maid, this brought a different cultural aspect from any other Wes Anderson movie. The action scenes are also perfectly fit for Anderson’s style, which isn’t fully realized at this point. All in all, this is certainly one of the weaker Anderson films, but there are sparks of joy in this movie that make it enjoyable, 6/10.