Budapest Hotel' takes grand tour of a lost continent

• Fox Searchlight Pictures
• GOING UP IN THE WORLD: Paul Schlase, Tony Revolori, Tilda Swinton and Ralph Fiennes in 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'

The fans and detractors of director Wes Anderson generally agree that his films take place in the same "world," in a figurative sense. They might be set at prep schools, summer camps, passenger trains or even submarines, but the settings always reflect Anderson's defining aesthetic for comedic tone, fashion, music cues and even fonts.

Anderson hasn't literally created his own planet yet, but he probably comes the closest with The Grand Budapest Hotel. The title institution is a storied mountain resort, but Anderson's goes far beyond its grounds to create an entire country. We first see the film's fictional Eastern European nation of Zubrowka as the quintessence of Soviet-era drabness, but before that, it was the pinnacle of old world charm. The lovely, doomed nation could just as easily be called Andersonland, but The Grand Budapest Hotel represents a flowering of the director's creative imagination.

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Multiple layers of artifice give the thrilling yarn the quality of a romantic fairy tale. An aging famous novelist (Tom Wilkinson) introduces the film by harking back to 1960s, when his younger self (Jude Law) stayed at the Grand Budapest at its saddest and seediest. There, he meets the avuncular owner, Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham), who harks back to the hotel's glory days in the early 1930s, when he was a humble refugee turned lobby boy (played by Tony Revolori).

Zero finds a mentor and flawed role model in M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), the hotel's tireless concierge. The driving force behind the luxurious alpine retreat, M. Gustave isn't just an impeccable frontman, but also an incorrigible gigolo who woos his richest, blondest and oldest female guests. He's as prone to quote lines of romantic poetry as he is to explode with unexpected profanity - a trait that goes a long way to keep the film from getting too twee.

Upon the death of M. Gustave's richest and oldest special friend (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), the concierge gets caught up in a plot involving a will contested by a hilariously malevolent family, led by Adrien Brody's grasping scion and Willem Dafoe as his enforcer. M. Gustave must also match wits with a sympathetic but unwavering military police officer (Edward Norton). It's as if he's caught between old Eastern Europe's aristocratic power structure, and the police state system that will replace it behind the Iron Curtain.

Desperate to clear his name from a false accusation, M. Gustave enlists Zero's help for exploits that include fraught border crossings, prison breaks and a James Bond-style chase down a ski slope. Throughout, he emerges as the latest of Anderson's driving, quirkily charismatic protagonists. From Rushmore's Max Fisher to Royal Tannenbaum to Mr. Fox, Anderson's films nearly always center on men who are part stage manager, part con man, and their attempts to control their respective worlds always run aground on reality. Fiennes makes M. Gustave at once unflappable and comically flawed, proving once again that he's one of the most reliable yet underappreciated leading men in contemporary movies.

The Grand Budapest Hotel features a parade of colorful cameos from seemingly everyone who's ever been in an Anderson film. Nevertheless, the characters apart from M. Gustave and the elder and younger Zero can resist the audience's emotional attachment. Zero's beloved Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) proves far more defined by her ostentatious birthmark than her actual personality.

Anderson nevertheless seems utterly sincere in his fondness for a lost way of life defined by the Grand Budapest at its zenith. He presents an intoxicating dream of Old Europe that leads to a harsh awakening, the film's uproarious comedy tinged with melancholy. Anderson's audiences can argue whether his films are thematically resonate enough, but no one should deny themselves the pleasure of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Anderson's films are great places to visit, and you don't have to live there.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. 4 stars. Directed by Wes Anderson. Stars Ralph Fiennes, Tony Revolori. Rated R. Opens March 14. At the Tara Theatre.