Entertainment

WES MESS VERY ‘LIMITED’

HAVE a few strong cups of Earl Grey if you have to see “The Darjeeling Limited,” a slow train to Dullsville that makes all local stops. You know a film is in trouble if the most interesting thing in it is the luggage.

Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson are three brothers who take a train through India in search of an adventure that doesn’t occur. If director Wes Anderson had actually sent these actors on a ramble through the subcontinent, the result could not have failed to be more interesting than the script he wrote with Schwartzman and Roman Coppola.

The story offers nothing except aimless quirk. Wilson’s character, Francis, obnoxiously orders for everyone at mealtimes. Peter (Brody) talks about his pregnant wife, while Jack (Schwartzman) frets over an ex who may or may not be the character played by Natalie Portman in a short introductory film that is only on the Web.

Francis, who is recovering from a near-fatal accident, tries to create bonding experiences because the brothers haven’t spoken for a year. But as he urges them to seek revelations, the movie becomes as shapeless as the Beatles’ movie “Magical Mystery Tour.” The guys soak up the colorful India-ness while Jack flirts with a stewardess. Eventually they get kicked off the train for letting their lethal pet snake escape. More local color. Lots of drab attempts at arch whimsy and hip sweetness.

Francis keeps asking about power adapters and gets one of his $3,000 loafers stolen. Jack writes short stories while insisting his characters are fictional. Peter worries that he’s heading for divorce because of “the way we were raised.” The journey will reunite them with their mother (Anjelica Huston), who has entered a convent that is being menaced by a tiger. “It ate one of the sisters’ brothers,” goes the laugh line. About the closest anyone comes to an insight is, “I love the way this country smells. I’ll never forget it. It’s kinda spicy.”

Such gentle vapidity, gently mocked, is an Anderson staple. His films have always been mannered, but the first three -“Bottle Rocket,” “Rushmore,” “The Royal Tenenbaums” – whistled with vitality. Both “The Life Aquatic” and the new one are fussy. “Darjeeling” is a twee dollhouse in which the dolls get really swell luggage, and we peek over Anderson’s shoulder as he shifts his playthings this way and that.

Those suitcases might be the most prominently credited ones in film history (“François Voltaire suitcases by Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, suitcase wildlife drawings by Eric Anderson”), and they say a lot about Anderson. Decorated with coloring-book-style renderings of fierce animals and fashioned of luscious leather, they’re the toys of a precocious rich kid. At a stage in Anderson’s career when he should be moving on, he is instead circling back.

Anderson’s dramatic suitcase is all but empty: It contains only a tired idea (boys wounded by their father’s absence, a theme of all Anderson’s films), a taste (this time for the films of Satyajit Ray and Jean Renoir’s glorious “The River”) and a pose – that of the extravagantly bored preppy who fears, above all, being caught believing in anything much.

kyle.smith@nypost.com

THE DARJEELING LIMIITED
Never leaves the station.
Rated R (profanity). Running time: 91 minutes. Opening Friday’s New York Film Festival; opens Saturday at the Union Square and the Lincoln Square.