Asteroid City

The Plot: Playwright Conrad (Edward Norton) lives in a black and white world, but he imagines in colour and writes with broad brushstrokes. The story-within-the-story takes place in the fictional town of Asteroid City, where widower Augie (Jason Schwartzman) is just about to tell his four precocious children that their mother has passed on. They’ve arrived to participate and compete in a junior stargazing event with grandfather Stanley (Tom Hanks) in tow. There, they encounter all manner of characters including glamourous actor Midge (Scarlett Johansson), a fast-talking general (Jeffrey Wright) and an out-of-this-world visitor (Jeff Goldblum) who sparks a quarantine…

The Verdict: Wes Anderson has been around long enough to develop a devoted following with his particular brand of offbeat filmmaking and a familiar cast drawn from a who’s-who in Hollywood. His films are now so distinctive that the trailers appear to be edited by either Anderson himself or avid devotees in the studio marketing department. Recently, he’s even spawned cheap imitations online in which fans have applied his directorial style to other films including Dune (he doesn’t want to know about it though). He’s a brand unto himself, which is what makes his films so appealing and special, even when they’re not-so-special like his latest offering Asteroid City. Drawing upon his love of 1950s Americana – picture-perfect environments, happy families, cutesy kids and colourful diners – he’s mixed it up with a nod to Steven Spielberg (acknowledged in the end credits) to come up with his own close encounter of the quirky kind.

Asteroid City is best described as two films that occasionally bump and cross-over into each other – to amusing effect. In one film, in black and white and Academy ratio, a playwright struggles with how to best describe his vast array of characters under the watchful eye of a host (Bryan Cranston). His actors mill about in front of him, waiting to be called onstage. The other film, in vivid colour and widescreen, is what the playwright visualises – moving beyond the theatrical stage to take in a desert setting where his imagination runs riot at the possibilities. It’s an intriguing set-up for a film, similar in narrative structure to Joe Wright’s take on Anna Karenina but more convincingly executed by Anderson. As Robert D. Yeoman’s camera pans and swishes smoothly from one scene and set of characters to the next and from stage to screen, it takes on the quality of tableaux filmmaking. Each scene is so well composed and choreographed that it could be a painting. Asteroid City is undeniably pretty to look at and has a cast to die for, but why then does it come across as somewhat hollow?

The fault mostly lies with Anderson’s script with Roman Coppola. It’s loosely assembled and relies heavily on incidence, whimsy and Anderson’s repertory group of actors (with some new members like Tom Hanks) to fill in the narrative blanks. There’s not much of a plot here, with Augie as the ostensible lead character but he’s at sea (mentally speaking) for most of the film. Even the alien encounter turns out to be a non-event, though it does lead to the film’s most charming moment and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him Jeff Goldblum. One longs for the sharper wit and more character-driven turn of someone like Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel but alas, that is not to be here. What we have instead is mid-range Anderson, now heading towards later-career Woody Allen territory where his earlier films were better and funnier.

That’s not to say that Asteroid City should be passed over. There’s still much to enjoy here and is at least less pretentious than Anderson’s previous film. If he’s in danger of becoming a parody of himself, it hasn’t shown just yet. In a summer of noisy blockbusters, a new Wes Anderson film is still a breath of fresh air. While it’s not as special as some of his other films, Asteroid City is a space age oddity that mostly rocks.

Rating: 3 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor