The Grand Budapest Hotel was also one of Wes Anderson's strongest collaborations at the story level. Hugo Guinness was awarded a story credit for it and the framing of the film acts like it is an adaptation of a book by Hugo Guinness (that at least so far, has not been published as such). Grand Budapest leaves me wondering how much Wes Anderson would serve to benefit from more collaborators at the story level and larger writer rooms rather than soloing most of it. The French Dispatch being about that but written solo, seemed ironic in a bad way to me.

But of course, it could just be that Wes Anderson's writing doesn't speak to me as it does to some. I think Life Aquatic is often under-rated as a capture of what I find to be the more fun parts of Anderson's voice and Rushmore quite often over-rated. (I've just never liked Rushmore. It has never worked for me.)