This one has got a heart. Hard to pinpoint, perhaps, but it's in there - the three brothers played by Wes Anderson regulars Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman and new guy Adrian Brody are looking for it too. Coming from a typically Andersonian broken home, they are on a quest to rescue their mother from a convent in the Himalayas.

Wes Anderson has acquired a reputation of being a stark technician, a Kubrickian perfectionist aloofly observing his dysfunctional subjects and chronicling the minutiae of their circumstances. But this is not quite accurate. His has a sincere empathy for the very real emotions felt by this most privileged of demographic sectors. The passion is there in the detail. The nerdy obsessiveness and outrageous whimsy are the articulation of his affection for these broken American children. His characters are moneyed, educated WASPS, yet suffer the bleak, empty melancholy only these advantages bring. Anderson's camera never mocks or belittles them - we are asked only to laugh at their naivety, their inadaptability or their lofty pretensions.

Their insularity is touching rather than distancing, and there is a pointed moment when Francis (Wilson) complains to two Germans on board the eponymous train that they are talking too loudly.

The brothers' relationship is artfully sketched in the first twenty minutes, almost imperceptibly hinting at huge back stories for each of them and the tense connections between themselves. Shot on location in India, the film rather forces the subcontinent into mere backdrop. Gratefully, it refuses to use the spirituality and religious culture of the country as shorthand for all that these American tourists lack. Yes, they are artless and tactless, but the last thing Anderson needs to inflict on these determined Protestants is an unseemly mess of appropriated spirituality.

The music is spot on - a mix of classic rock from The Stranglers and the Stones, and a collection of soundtracks to other Indian films by the likes of Satyajit Ray and even some Merchant-Ivory productions.

These characters really are sympathetic - you can identify with them as hapless tourists, as warring offspring or as lost children looking for their mother. And the film is the most flat out funny thing he's done since Rushmore. At one point, as the brothers make a particularly crucial travel decision that as a viewer you really want them to make, I felt a broad smile across my face. On a whim, I took a look behind me and found every row as far as I could see was also beaming up at the screen.

All Anderson's usual motifs are here - the perfectly judged soundtrack, the sparse but kinetic camera work, the Punch Drunk-esque lush production design, the cinematic references (check out the windy bell-ringing echoes of Black Narcissus's Himalayan convent) and the repertory group of actors he has aligned to his cause - Wilson, Bill Murray, Anjelica Houston, Kumar Pallana and Waris Ahluwalia.

And if you're looking for a perfect distillation of Anderson's style, look no further than Hotel Chevalier, the accompanying short. It's a note perfect two hander starring Jason Schwarzman's character and Natalie Portman as his ex-girlfriend. The dry delivery, the rich mise-en-scene, the crude ridiculousness and the total yet accessible coolness all come together in this film.

Some things rankle. The treatment of women, both in the feature and in Hotel Chevalier, the accompanying short (or Part One, as it is outside of the US), is perfunctory. And is the film an attempt to allegorize America's isolationism? I don't think it goes that deep, but who knows.

Go and lose yourself in this film.

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Indian references when reviewing the film:

"...it feels a little thin – more poppadum (albeit a fresh and spicy one) than chapati..." -