Set in a fictional American desert town circa 1955, the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowsh...
WHAT I LIKED: The exaggerated, cartoonish way that Wes Anderson frames and directs his actors and environments has always made me feel that he's a satirist above all else, and his latest film 'Asteroid City,' is no exception.
It centres around a stargazing convention for a bunch of families with gifted and talented kids at a resort at an asteroid crater in the American desert. But from the opening scenes, the place is made fun of as a corporate Americanisation. We see little vending machines selling everything from water to desert land, Steve Carell's simple hotelier doting on everyone, hilariously small fences marking routes and no-go areas, and a bunch of busy-body astrologists at the research facility (including the nervous Tilda Swinton) who seem to know less about space than the children.
The kids themselves are also a subject of ridicule with their nerdy games and competitions, and Anderson particularly seems to love sticking his camera in lead Woodrow (Jake Ryan)'s face as his eyes boggle amusingly at the asteroid or at his eccentric young love interest Dinah (Grace Edwards). Their respective families also get some development, as Woodrow's father Augie (Jason Schwartzman) informs him and his sisters that they've just lost their mother, and that he's carrying her around in a tupperware. Augie is the subject of Anderson's usual comic sadness as he mopes around the entire film, but he also finds a kindred spirit in Dinah's Mum who's a similarly depressed movie star Midge (Scarlett Johansson) who wistfully stares into the distance all the time and sighs about her various ex-husbands.
Where other directors would treat that all as gospel, Anderson's default position is always humour, and that's further proved when an alien arrives in the crater for a quick look around only to promptly bugger off. Again, where others would treat this as a moment of suspense or awe, here the alien looks deliberately ridiculous, and the faces of the visitors and staff are filmed from above so scared and amazed that we have no choice but to laugh. Then there's the hilarious response of the gruff resident Army Chief (Jeffrey Wright) and his soldiers to corden off the area, and the response of the visitors who all promptly start theorizing conspiracy theories and going mad from being quarantined.
In the end, it's another highly amusing, satirical film from Wes Anderson which always chooses satire over sincerity.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: There's a thread about the stuff in the desert being a "play within a movie," as we frequently cut away to the "actors," of the characters backstage, discussing their characters with the writer and director (Ed Norton and Adrien Brody). In the end they're all reading too much into it and struggling to find the meaning, and though that clearly makes a clever point about how everyone tends to treat Anderson's work, the meta, fourth-wall breaking nature of it never really lands and ends up feeling like an odd distraction from the comedy.
VERDICT: Another insincere, satirical film from Wes Anderson, 'Asteroid City,' does what I've been doing for years and asks its audience to stop taking his work so seriously.
