Asteroid City (***1/2) – What a beautiful world this could be

Written and Directed by Wes Anderson
Starring Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, Jeff Goldblum

For those who’ve seen any one of Wes Anderson films, Asteroid City will fit right in with previous experiences. There is the dry humor sprinkled about this equally arid landscape. Most of the jokes land, even if they seem disconnected from the reality of the other characters.

The premise has Edward Norton’s 1950’s Playwright Conrad Earp in the process of creating a retro-futuristic play about a fictional desert town (think Area 51) named for the title of the film. There is a convention of young inventors called Junior Stargazer. The kids arriving with their parents are each special or odd in unique ways.

Primary among these is photo journalis Augie Steenback (Schwartzman), with his 4 kids. Woodrow (Ryan) is his itellectual teenage son, there to compete for an award with the other conventioneers. He has three sisters who claim to be witches. None of them had been apprised that their mother died 3 weeks earlier and currently resides in ash form in a tupperware bowl.

There is no need to explore the many subplots, other than to say most of them are effective. Anderson drills home slices of brainy Americana of a time in U.S. History where opportunity met with intellectual curiousity along with a nice healthy dose of 50’s style interstellar paranoia. Mix in with this the format of a television special of the creation of the play (in small format black and white) then you have a jumble of truths strewn about each of the characters creating the play, the special and within the play itself.

It’s a long, esoteric way to go to make a comedy that provides nuggets of truth about life.

Still there are some moments of genius comedy, and we don’t see those often these days. Jeff Goldblum’s cameo is as inspired as anything one will see this year. Schwartzman is as complex and dedicated as this viewer has ever seen him. Tom Hank’s Father-In-Law Stanley Zak brings a drier, but no less anguished character reminiscent of his manager Jimmy Dugan from A League of Their Own.

When it comes to Wes Anderson, I very much enjoy his animated work (Isle of Dogs and Fantastic Mr. Fox) more than his live action, aside from a few, like The Grand Budapest Hotel or The Royal Tenenbaums. This movie almost intentionally threads the line between both types of films, and it benefits for it.

While I care considerably less for the material that takes place outside of the reality of the incredibly picturesque Asteroid City, the effort overall is worth more laughs that one can expect out of 105 cinematic minutes nearly 70 years after the events of the film take place.

(***1/2 out of *****)