The Palace (2023) review

On New Year's Eve in 1999 the staff of the Gstaad Palace in Switzerland, led by manager Hansueli Kopf (Oliver Masucci), are trying to prepare the evening's festivities but their guests keep causing problems: billionaire Arthur Dallas III (John Cleese) has brought in a penguin to impress his young wife Magnolia (Bronwyn James), gruff American Bill Crush (Mickey Rourke) has some financial scheme he's working on with bank auditor Caspar Tell (Milan Peschel), the dog belonging to the histrionic Marquise de la Valle (Fanny Ardant) has worms, the Russians are storing suitcases with cash in a vault ... and several of them are concerned about the Y2K bug.  I'm going to assume 90-year-old director Polanski and his co-screenwriters Jerzy Skolimowski and Ewa Piaskowska thought this take on Grand Hotel is funny, except it's anything but (and embarrassing for everyone involved): mocking wealthy, privileged types with disfiguring plastic surgery jobs should be beneath them (but apparently isn't) and then it actually borrows from Weekend at Bernie's for a highly unimaginative sight gag (involving Cleese's corpse).  I feel like this is the director's attempt to pay homage to Luis Buñuel, but he lacks the Spanish surrealist's finesse and subversive dark humor.