Asteroid City - Movie Review

Critics Score - 7 of 10

General Audience Score - 6 of 10

Wes Anderson is a director that makes films that have unparalleled and unique visual styling, eclectic screenwriting and dialogue and a propensity to make films that general audiences might consider just plain weird. That weirdness has endeared many a film lover and critic to his work over the decades that he’s been creating cinema. Along comes his latest full length film from Focus Features, Asteroid City, cratering into theatres everywhere. The film tells the story of a writer, played by Edward Norton, and his fictional account of a man who visits Asteroid City with his teen son and three young daughters. The film has an absolutely star studded cast including Tom Hanks, Steve Carrell, Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson and a slew of others, although some are more cameo roles than actual characters in the film. While Asteroid City is one of Anderson’s more accessible films in terms of connecting with mainstream audiences, that’s not saying much. It still resides heavily in the abstract, with it’s convoluted dialogue taking one hundred words to say ten and a film within a film structure creating for some confusion among the general populace. Many film aficionados will be relishing their time in Asteroid City while the rest of us, even if we’re having a bit of fun along the way, myself included at times, will be wondering what exactly is going on.

SYNOPSIS - Our story unfolds with some opening narration by Bryan Cranston, who serves as our theatre host, explaining in somewhat confusing terms that we’re witnessing the writer Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) at work on his typewriter. We skip ahead and listen to piano keys sounding out a lighthearted melody as Conrad stands in front of a theatre and they prepare to start rehearsal on the play he’s written. As you can expect from any Wes Anderson screenplay, the overly wordy writing takes us for a winding jaunt down the corridors of the English vernacular. That means he speaks in a way that’s semi-confusing, as Jeff Daniels would say in Dumb & Dumber, “dogs, to the layperson”. The setting for the play Conrad describes for us is in the desert, a little town called Asteroid City. This “city” is chock full of Wes’s signature quirkiness, an unfinished freeway ramp leading to nowhere, a single pump gas or “filling station”, a train that “click-clacks by at five miles per hour and finally of course, an impact crater one hundred feet in depth and diameter, from which the city derives it’s name. Next he introduces us to the actors from his play and while we observe them lounging around behind the scenes in the theatre, the movie begins to take on some “film within a film” meta qualities. Some of the key player actors we meet are photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), film actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), five star general Griff Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), the retired Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), many of whom glance up out of the camera at us during this roll call of sorts as if they’re in the loop about something as to which we are unaware.

The next sequence is a ride aboard the train mentioned above as the lively tune Last Train To San Fernando by Johnny Duncan & The Bluegrass Boys plays, the 1950’s ditty harmonizing over scenes of the train cars loaded with tractors and oranges rolling through the rock formations in the desert. As we move into the actual plot of the play, we find ourselves in Asteroid City for something like a teen science fair competition finals, Augie’s son and Midge’s daughter are both finalists competing for a top prize, along with three other finalists. The film’s main protagonist Augie, (although the film follows many character storylines as it goes), is a widower with his teenage son and three elementary school age daughters. As Augie bumps into the sexy Midge in his wandering about the meager town, they begin to chat and soon find themselves neighbors that can look into each others windows in the small bungalow hotel they take up in for their stays. As the crew of characters eventually end up in the crater for a part of the science fair ceremony, a chance encounter with an extraterrestrial being proves to be a turning point in the silliness of it all. Of course with Wes, his directing tendencies and sense of humor are prominently featured as always, we wind our way in and out of the theatre production construct as we explore this arid city but thematically lush landscape of extraterrestrial adventures. 

Wes Anderson’s combination of writing style and visual techniques as a director go together like peanut butter and jelly. His artistry behind the camera truly make him a unique and distinguished voice on the current cinematic landscape. That being said, even though I’m not the biggest fan of his writing, the intricacies of his screenplays are exceptional, the character details and oddball humor in Asteroid worked better for me than in some of his other films. As far as the acting goes, the actors are all playing actors who are then playing in this theatre production, so it’s more amusing work than impressive performances we're getting, but the ensemble cast is delightful and Schwartzman is quite good as he leads the pack of misfits parading around in Anderson’s shenanigans. There are several themes the film touches on such as our human existence, place in the universe, the meaning of life, but these aren’t hit head on, as can be expected with Wes, but they’re more or less sideswiped and the viewer is allowed great freedom to read between the lines as to any takeaways. The score by Alexandre Desplat, one of the great composers currently working, is simple, yet effective at keeping in pace with the tone of the film, it’s chimes, piano notes and light violin strums are completely in harmony with Wes’s ethereal theatre play. While the story is in many ways simple, the characters are endearing and as somebody that can sometimes find some of the director’s idiosyncrasies to be more irritating than charming, this is one city I wouldn’t mind falling back to again.

SUMMARY - In my book, Anderson’s latest is one of his better efforts, not that’ll I’ll be writing home about it, this isn’t the turning point in making me an official fan and this film isn’t going to be nearly as much fun for general audiences as it will for those in tune with Wes’s sensibilities. But don’t get me wrong, this trip can be good fun, sometimes silly, sometimes insightful, more often than not bizarre, but there’s a somewhat decent time to be had checking out this City that got hit by an Asteroid.