The Phoenician Scheme sends off some Wes Anderson fans

Wes Anderson is a very specific taste – I hesitate to call it an acquired one.

You either like his strangely airless, dolls’ house aesthetic - with deadpan performances by an all-celebrity cast and serpentine plots winding their way to the horizon - or you don’t.

His latest, The Phoenician Scheme, seems to have seen off some once-loyal fans. Enough’s enough, they’re reported to have said.

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Curiously, I had that feeling a few movies ago but now seem to be returning to the fold. The fact is, you don’t go to Wes Anderson for action or even emotion.

His favourite shot is the medium wide shot, with his characters moving around within the frame.

What I like about Anderson isn’t the fact that he hires my favourite actors. Or not just the fact that this one stars Benicio del Toro, with Tom Hanks, Willem Dafoe, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johanssen, Charlotte Gainsborough and Bill Murray as an Old Testament God.

Oh, and Mathieu Amalric and Richard Ayoade.

No, I love the fact that every shot in The Phoenician Scheme has a joke in it, albeit occasionally surreal. I’d say he was the René Magritte of comedy films, if he wasn’t also so American.

Buster Keaton with dialogue? There are certainly touches of Billy Wilder, and Powell and Pressburger, even Busby Berkeley. Anderson certainly loves a great aerial ceiling shot.

You’ll either go to this film because of Anderson, or you’ll stay away for the same reason. But here’s the plot anyway.

Our anti-hero is the unbelievably wealthy Zsa Zsa Korda – Anderson loves a good Hungarian name – played by the enigmatic Benicio del Toro.

Having survived yet another plane crash – the period seems to be Somerset Maugham-era 1930s – Korda, like so many multi-millionaires, is prepared to gamble everything he’s got for a bit more.

He decides to make his latest scheme a family affair.

He rejects his nine adopted sons – who are all around 12 years old – in favour of his daughter, the novice nun Liesl.

Liesl is played by the gorgeously named Mia Threapleton, who happens to be Kate Winslet’s daughter. Liesl seems to have inherited the Korda deadpan delivery.

She’s persuaded to be part of the fiendishly complicated Phoenician Scheme – one that requires a series of steps to achieve.

To assist her, Korda hires a Swedish chaperone called Bjorn, played by Michael Cera at his most wide-eyed and innocent. Even when he finds a bomb on Korda’s private plane.

On their heels is a sinister cabal of men in suits, all going out of their way to upend the Phoenician Scheme.

This requires plenty of brilliant ploys on the part of Korda, mostly plucked out of thin air as required. Mind you, that seems to be the method employed by writer-director Anderson too.

Anderson’s directing style - everything in its place, performances where nobody seems remotely surprised by anything – gives the possibly fraudulent impression that the story has been ingeniously mapped out with a beginning, a middle and an end.

But is it fraudulent? Because, despite the apparent randomness of events, somehow everything comes to a satisfying conclusion. Dumb luck, or intelligent design, you wonder?

Meanwhile you’ve spent time in very agreeable company – not just the cast, but some famous and wildly expensive art works.

That said, while I enjoyed it enormously, would I want to ever see The Phoenician Scheme again? I don’t think I can say that.