Perhaps it isn’t right to compare back-to-back reviews?
If three months back you said that I would give the same score (3.5) to Barbie (2023) and the next release from Wes Anderson, I would have questioned the need for our relationship.
I hated Barbie but it was visually very clever; Asteroid City (2023) was also a visual pleasure. I enjoyed it.
So why the same scores?
Perhaps it comes back to expectation. One, I expected to be awful and it was – but I respected the process. The second I hoped would be genius and it wasn’t.
Starring a gang of Anderson regulars – most of whom have become stars, or were before and have added strong Anderson vehicles to their CVs – Asteroid City is funny in parts and lasts a lot less than two hours. Yet I found it ‘long’.
There are humorous characters, the sight gags are good and the pastels in the set design reminded of ice-cream vendors at a plush beach resort.
Because Anderson films – this one written with Roman Coppola – are typically unusual, some pre-film explanation is useful to his audience. This comes via Bryan Cranston in a 1950s-style TV documentary introduction.
Cranston reveals Conrad Earp (Edward Arnold) writing the play that becomes the story we are about to see.
It is 1955 USA and five junior stargazers are due at the desert location of Asteroid City to be awarded for their scientific inventions. The city is a garage, diner and motel built near a crashed meteor site.
Augie (Jason Schwartzman), “Brainiac” son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and his three little sisters are the first family we see arrive and other characters (the students, their parents, a class field trip, a country band who miss their bus) gradually emerge to be given their accommodation by the genial motel manager, played by Steve Carrell.
Augie is grieving the death of his wife from three months before. He hasn’t told the children.
Naturally the US government is wicked but behaving beautifully and their representative General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) brilliantly delivers a lecture as he awards the five budding scientists. The wickedness is the government is going to steal their ideas.
Another stargazer parent is movie star Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) playing a confident but unhappy woman, with Marilyn Monroe-like comparisons.
The viewer is treated to sight gags, often interrupting the key action of the moment and returns to the black-and-white documentary where we see the actor playing Augie rehearse for his part. He delivers a knock-out reading then seduces the author in a turn around of the historic understanding of casting couch.
Throw in an alien; Tom Hanks; the film’s cast in a Lee Strasberg-like class run by Willem Dafoe; Adrien Brody as the director; and Cranston wandering into a scene of the movie before realising he shouldn’t be there and the total is plenty to entertain you.
It just wasn’t The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)-like brilliant and I’m afraid that’s why it only receives 3.5
Score: 3.5
I WRIGHT 