Nick Schager of "Slant Magazine" gave the film 2 stars out of 4 and said "the ingredients that have increasingly defined Wes Anderson's films...seem, with "The Darjeeling Limited", to have become something like limitations." Emanuel Levy gave the film a "C" and said "Going to India and collaborating with two new writers do little to invigorate or reenergize director Wes Anderson in "The Darjeeling Limited", because he imposes the same themes, self-conscious approach, and serio-comic sensibility of his previous films on the new one, confining his three lost brothers not only within his limited world, but also within a limited space, a train compartment." Levy also said "after reaching a nadir with his last feature, the $50 million folly "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", which was an artistic and commercial flop, Anderson could only go upward." Dana Stevens of "Slate" magazine wrote, "Maybe Anderson needs to shoot someone else's screenplay, to get outside his own head for a while and into another's sensibility. It's telling that his funniest and liveliest recent work was a commercial for American Express." Kyle Smith of the "New York Post" gave the film 1 stars out of 4 and said "At a stage in Anderson’s career when he should be moving on, he is instead circling back."