‘Asteroid City’ is a crashing bore
If you asked an AI program to create a Wes Anderson movie, you’d get “Asteroid City,” the latest — and worst — film from the writer-director of “The French Dispatch” (2021) and “Isle of Dogs” (2018).
All of the meme-able characteristics that make a Wes Anderson film are here, including the stilted dialogue, the obvious attempts at humor, the aspect ratio changes (in color and black and white this time), the droning mostly white actors delivering their lines as if they were androids, the underused minority performers, and the overly dense plot that’s useless to try to follow. Regulars like Tilda Swinton have requisite cameos.
What makes this film feel like a simulation gone awry are the visuals. Even at their most unbearably twee, Anderson’s earlier movies have memorable imagery. Aesthetic world-building has always been the most intriguing and recognizable feature of his work, so much so that it has inspired numerous parodies.
By comparison, “Asteroid City” is eye-scorching to the point of being unwatchable whenever it depicts the scenes in color that make up most of the film. Shot in Spain like Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, it is set in a desert locale complete with a stop-motion roadrunner that goes “meep-meep!” Anderson works with a palette of superbright colors — and the result looks like a drunk, pastel-colored rainbow exploded all over the screen.
(When a guy who grew up in 1970sera New Jersey tells you the colors are overwhelmingly garish, believe him.)
“Asteroid City” takes place on two planes of existence. The first, shot in the Academy ratio and black and white, is inhabited by The Host (Bryan Cranston). In a faux-documentary style narration, he immediately tells us Asteroid City isn’t real. It’s a three-act play written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), whom we see working on the material in September 1955. Let’s call this the “real world” section.
The second plane of existence involves the enactment of Earp’s play, “Asteroid City,” shot in widescreen and in color. The near-ghost town is named for its most famous attraction, the crater made by an asteroid. The asteroid is also available for viewing at the Space Camp-style event taking place in town. Jeffrey Wright plays General Grif Gibson, the military man overseeing the festivities.
Every so often, a nuclear bomb test goes off, filling the background with those dopey-looking mushroom clouds Anderson used before in “Isle of Dogs.” (I hope Christopher Nolan borrows this effect for “Oppenheimer.”) With its military presence and desert locale, Asteroid City evokes Area 51. Especially when the alien shows up. This isn’t a spoiler — the alien’s mentioned in the trailer.
Earp’s main characters are newly widowed war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Anderson regular Jason Schwartzman) and Hollywood actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). Steenbeck is in town to watch his genius son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), participate in a young adult science fair where multiple inventions will be judged.
Because of his car breaking down (Matt Dillon explains the mishap in an amusing cameo), Steenbeck has to call his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), to retrieve his younger daughters. Zak is shocked to learn that his son-in-law has yet to tell the kids that their mother is not only dead, but that her ashes are in the Tupperware container they’ve been carrying around for weeks.
Being a play, much of the action takes place in few locations. The main set is a motel run by Steve Carell in a role originally intended for Anderson stalwart Bill Murray. Because of a recent fire, one of the rooms is actually a tent.
Steenbeck and Campbell embark on a romantic relationship, most of which is depicted by Schwartzman and ScarJo chatting from their respective motel windows. The actors are framed in the square area to look like puppets in a Punch and Judy show, and their dialogue is delivered in dull monotones that make them sound like robots in a 1950s science-fiction movie. Almost everyone sounds like robots; it’s a chore to listen to this film.
Meanwhile, back in the “real world,” Schwartzman is also playing Jones Hall, the actor who plays Steenbeck. Several cast members, including Johansson and Steve Park, appear in dual roles as the actor and the part they are playing. The plot became so convoluted that I stopped caring, opting instead to pray for the end of the film or the apocalypse, whichever came first.
Two elements prevented me from assigning “Asteroid City” a no-star rating. The first is the characters played by Margot Robbie and Jeff Goldblum, neither of whom I’ll identify here. Robbie’s scene is the best in the film, a moment when dialogue, image, and meaning sync up for maximum effect. Goldblum’s cameo is the rare joke that works.
The other element that elevates the rating is the design of the alien itself. Considering how many extraterrestrials we’ve seen in movies, the fact that Anderson came up with something original is impressive. I also admire the director for successfully appealing the R rating on this film, allowing screen time for a body part we don’t normally see in PG-13 rated movies.
Late in the film, much of the cast breaks the fourth wall to chant “you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” Falling asleep won’t be a problem if you go see “Asteroid City.”