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I feel like I have been writing about The Darjeeling Limited forever (maybe the Movie Filter faithful feel that way, too), but I finally saw Wes Anderson's Indian travelogue last weekend on a trip to New Orleans for the Voodoo Music Festival. For those unfamiliar, the Canal Place theater has a great knack for snagging more independent and art house films than anywhere in Baton Rouge, and I highly recommend making the drive a couple times a year. Not that The Darjeeling Limited is particularly indie. It was produced by Fox Searchlight, and it stars one of today's most recognizable comedy actors in Owen Wilson as well as two Oscar winners in Adrien Brody and Anjelica Huston. But nevertheless, it looks like the film's Baton Rouge debut might be next year, right beside Hot Rod on a metal rack in Best Buy.

So how was the movie? Upon first viewing it does not stand up to his best work (that would be Rushmore , but it is certainly an improvement upon the bloated, heartless wreck that was The Life Aquatic screenplay. And so it rests as a satisfactory but fun detour in the Anderson canon and one that actually proves he has the potential to grow as a filmmaker. The stakes, if it can be said, are both smaller and bigger this time around. Anderson doesn't try to reinvent the wheel here. He simply mends it, paints it with lush Indian pastels, and lets it roll.

The film begins with Adrien Brody outpacing Bill Murray to climb onto the caboose of the titular train and joining his brothers, the wealthy and self-absorbed Whitmans, in their cabin. Eldest brother Francis (Owen Wilson) has arranged a train journey though India that he hopes will reunite the brothers with each other and, unbeknownst to Peter (Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman), with their absent mother who fled to a Himalayan convent when family patriarch James Whitman died a year earlier. And that is the entirety of the plot.

A solid amount of laughs ensue as the brothers become reacquainted, bicker and banter, share secrets, play favorites, explore their foreign surroundings and attempt to manufacture their own spiritual awakenings. "I'm going to go pray at another thing," Brody says, annoyed after arguing with his brothers inside a shrine.

And Anderson does show genuine compassion for these characters. Despite all of the wealth and advantages life has offered them, they are just as inexplicably lost as their train midway through the film. As a viewer I felt sorry for them. Brody, in particular, really shines in his midlife-crisis subplot. Plus somehow his quirks seem more genuine than the others, while Owen Wilson simply plays to his strengths as an older and wealthier version of Bottle Rocket's Dignan.

* POSSIBLE SPOILERS *

Two glaring missed opportunities still stick in my craw. Let's discuss. First, Bill Murray. Why fly him to India and not give him anything to do other than his best O.J. impression running through the train station? Murray is hilarious, and you hardly let him say a word? Really!?! Why not begin the film with some sardonic Murray banter on a pay phone before he realizes he's late for his train. Then have him frantically dialogue with the cab driver. And while you're at it, make the cabbie Anderson regular Kumar Pallana. This type of humor is right up Murray's wheelhouse! Oh well.

The second mistake was the whole pan-across sequence set to The Rolling Stones' "Play With Fire." I've never been a fan of this song, and I can't see how the lyrics relate to what's going on in this movie. The individual scenes here were fine (save for the ill-advised tiger courtesy of Jim Henson's group), but the conceit of these faux scenes all taking place on the train doesn't work for me. Why not just have regular pan/cuts to different, and, um, real locations? This diorama-like tactic might have fit well in The Life Aquatic, or those recent Anderson-directed cell-phone commercials, but up until this point The Darjeeling Limited was going for a more realistic approach. When I saw this, I wasn't sure what to think other than "Gee, the set designers must have worked overtime on these."

After the boy's death in the river, the quiet, elegiac village sequence and the mystical funeral procession, it is nearly impossible to reverse back to a comedic tone. So why try? Those scenes were some of my favorites in the film, and really show Anderson's growth as a filmmaker. The Darjeeling Limited is a gripping adventure, even as it clings too much to flippant superficiality when a deeper, more spiritual tone would have served it well. In my mind it warrants a second viewing. Here's hoping Anderson's next film can meld the heart of Rushmore with the adventurous spirit of Darjeeling. Now that would be something.