Film review: ‘Asteroid City’ by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

A screen drenched in pastel colours, oddly symmetrical compositions that recall childhood dioramas, zany off-kilter characters and obtuse dialogue, yes, it’s time for another Wes Anderson film. Some adore the droll humour, the oblique storylines, the monotone voices and the blank faces staring at the camera that typify his movies. Others, like myself, admire his visual artistry and maverick spirit but struggle to cope with the tsunami of quirkiness.

His latest effort, Asteroid City, is another literate, artful but almost inscrutably weird exploration of human foibles and oddball behaviour that will once again divide audiences.

The film sees a disparate group of people – played by perhaps Anderson’s most star-studded cast – converge on the eponymous desert town in 1955.  There, they engage in typically weird, fractious conversations that swing wildly from obsessing about complete trivia to contemplating the mysteries of the universe. If there’s a centre to the film it’s Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck, a war photographer who has come to see his superbly nerdy son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) receive a science award and to inter his recently deceased wife’s ashes. A despondent figure, Augie’s given a flicker of happiness when he encounters Hollywood star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). Also drifting through this surreal world are Tom Hanks as Augie’s father-in-law, Jeffrey Wright as the pompous General Gibson, Tilda Swinton as local scientist Dr Hickenlooper and Steve Carrell as a motel manager and would-be real estate salesmen, among many others.

Just to make the whole thing a little more confusing, the events at Asteroid City are actually meant to be a play within a TV show and the film occasionally steps out of its candy-coloured world by having a TV host (Bryan Cranston) provide framing narration while a playwright Edward Norton, acting teacher (Willem Dafoe) and theatre director (Adrien broody) have obscure rambling conversations.

Few will be surprised to learn that this film looks amazing. Mixing physical locations (mostly filmed in Spain) with what are often deliberately fake looking backdrops, Anderson makes a virtue of the setting’s artificiality giving this world the appearance of a 1950’s pop art painting come to life.

Of course, It’s full of pop cultural ephemera and American iconography.  It’s almost as if all of America’s 1950’s culture has converged at this point as Asteroid City has atomic bomb tests, Roswell-like alien visitors, hot rods, early southern-fried rock and enigmatic Hollywood stars.

For much of the time, though, many will be asking ‘where the hell is this film going?’.  Anderson’s films don’t always provide an answer to this question but Asteroid City feels even less focused than his other works to the extent that it may even irk some Anderson devotees.  Perhaps most annoying is that such as stellar cast is simply not used to its full potential with people like Tom Hanks popping up in scenes but to no great effect.

Amid all the contrived strangeness there are some funny moments, usually courtesy of characters driving each other into fits of rage but it’s certainly not as hilarious as the one or two people shrieking with laughter at the preview might have suggested.

Those who typically surrender to Wes Anderson’s strange, confounding alternate reality will probably find much to love about this film but it will irritate many others as evidenced by a few who grumpily exited the cinema at the preview.

Nick’s rating: ***

Genre: Drama/ Comedy/ Science Fiction.

Classification: M.

Director(s): Wes Anderson.

Release date: 10th Aug 2023.

Running time: 105 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

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