Wes Anderson's latest starts strong, peaks about halfway through, and then slowly crumbles into twee nonsense and painfully lazy metaphors (they literally shed their baggage!). Still, that first hour is one of the best I've seen all year, and now that Anderson's accompanying short Hotel Chevalier has been attached (featuring, yes, Natalie Portman's naked ass), it's nearly perfect. If you leave after the funeral sequence, it is perfect. (See Movie Times, page 88, for details.) BRADLEY STEINBACHER