Featuring Benicio Del Toro, Michael Cera, Scarlett Johansson and many more, the director's latest A-lister-filled farce has premiered at Cannes – and it's daft but fun.

Just when you think that Wes Anderson can't get any more Wes Anderson-ish, he makes a film which takes Wes Anderson-ishness to a whole new level, packing in yet more of the quirks that have become his trademarks: the symmetrical tableaux, the brightly coloured, crisply pressed costumes, the deadpan delivery of proudly artificial dialogue by an ensemble of stars, many of whom are regulars (yes, Bill Murray does appear). Whether viewers of his latest offbeat comedy are Anderson aficionados or Wes-sceptics, they're bound to wonder if the writer-director will ever attempt a project that isn't quite so recognisable.

The good news is that The Phoenician Scheme is one of Anderson's funnier films, with a commitment to knockabout zaniness which lets you smile at the Anderson-ishness rather than simply roll your eyes at it. The opening sequence, especially, is a madcap treat. Benicio del Toro is introduced as Zsa-zsa Korda, an amoral 1950s businessman who seems to have been inspired by the super-rich likes of William Randolph Hearst, J Paul Getty, Aristotle Onassis and Howard Hughes – and who bears a certain resemblance to the patriarch in The Royal Tenenbaums, too. He's first seen puffing a cigar on his private jet, and then surviving one of the assassination attempts that are a regular part of his life – and his miraculous escape has enough energy to make you giddy.

After that, though, the film quickly comes down to earth. Back in his palatial villa, Korda has a meeting with his 20-year-old daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton). She is a novitiate nun he hasn't seen in years, but he nonetheless wants her – and not one of his nine sons – to inherit the fortune he has made from arms dealing and profiteering, among other unsavoury practices. He also wants her to help him with his latest and greatest venture, a massive infrastructure scheme involving a railway and a dam in a Middle Eastern desert. Liesl isn't interested, but she does want to investigate the rumour that Korda murdered her mother, one of his three wives, so she agrees to hang around.

The trouble is that the infrastructure scheme has been sabotaged by a secret........

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