Have we anticipated Wes Anderson's 'The French Dispatch' enough?

That's fair. And I suppose there's something to a director who continues making films about his own distance from most lived experiences.

Yes, it seems alright to me to have a life-is-elsewhere film set more or less entirely in the elsewhere that life supposedly is.

I also really loved the look and the texture of the whole thing, which I suspect helped me gloss over some of the things others found irritating ro slow or whatever. I was very happy to just look at that fantastical and fantastically stylish world, I am very happy to think the effort of making the movie was justified by the results (at least in so far as any movie justifies the immense amount of effort required to make it).

I saw this film on a iPad in a motel during a power outage in Morro Bay so I think I should watch it again before I comment

Finally sat down with this last night, and have already cut up a few times this morning remembering the circus strongman on the hood of the getaway car during the chase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TLPrxqx5e8