Asteroid City Review

Wes Anderson is a filmmaker known for his signature visual style and whimsical tone. He takes his directional traits to the sci-fi genre with Asteroid City.

In 1955 a group of assorted people arrive in a small desert city. This includes war photographer Augie Steenbeck (John Schwartzman) and his 14-year-old son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), famous actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) and her teenage daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards), and other families attending the Junior Stargazer convention. However, this event to celebrate science takes an unusual direction when an unexpected visitor arrives.

Wes Anderson has garnered a great reputation with critics and cinephiles. His films have generally been well-received and his style is distinct. Anderson loves pastel colours, symmetric framing, stop-motion animation, and ensemble casts and Asteroid City had all of this. The direction, cinematography, art direction, and production design were immaculate. From a technical stand, Asteroid City was a marvel to behold.

Whilst Asteroid City had a sci-fi premise, it was very much a Wes Anderson film. It was filled with his tropes like a large cast of characters, focusing on young characters and social misfits, with multiple storylines going on at the same time. Fans of Anderson’s work will probably love it and people who have been more mixed about his work will not be won over. Even as someone who enjoyed the film, I couldn’t help but think of the Family Guy parody and the Honest Trailer of all his work.

Asteroid City had a quirky, oddball sense of humour and I did laugh and chuckle quirk a bit during the film. There were a few running gags during the film like one of the Junior Stargazers wanting to be dared into doing ‘experiments’ and the strange vending machines at the motel. Other jokes that landed were the appearance of the alien and when Augie’s car was at the garage.

There were some nice character relationships during the film. There were some budding romances with the most noticeable being between Augie and Midge, and Woodrow and Dinah. There was a wonderful awkwardness between Woodrow and Dinah because of their age and intelligence, but they clearly had a connection and experienced their first romantic relationship. Augie and Midge’s relationship was filled with quick dialogue as they talked about their lives and professions. As Schwartzman has aged, he has gone from being an awkward youngster in Anderson’s earlier films to someone who was more emotionally distant from others.

The typical narrative for Asteroid City would have been a group of smart kids going to a scientific convention when there’s an extra-terrestrial encounter, resulting in a military lockdown and the kids need to find a solution. This was what happened in films like E.T. and Super 8. Yet, Anderson didn’t go down the Spielbergian/Amblin Entertainment route, he put his stamp on the story and genre.

However, Asteroid City did have issues. The narrative was loose and went all over the place. This problem happened in two ways: within the story of Asteroid City and the framing device. The events in Asteroid City were a play and the framing device was the production of this play. At times the film cut to the events like the casting of actors, the director’s personal struggles, and the playwriter (Edward Norton) workshopping the script with some local actors. Within the play, there were storylines that seemed to go nowhere, like the potential romance between June Douglas (Maya Hawke), a young teacher, and Montana (Rupert Friend), a cowboy staying at the motel.

This spawning narrative led to several problems. There was a lack of focus and the attempt to have a meta-narrative made the film try to give Asteroid City more meaning than it really had. The wide cast led to some recognisable actors coming in for just one scene, like Hong Chau and Margot Robbie. They seemed like they wanted to work with Anderson regardless of how minor the role was. The focus on visuals over the story made Asteroid City into a style-over-substance film.

Asteroid City was an indulgent film for Anderson and it was made for his fans. It was narratively all over the place, but it was visually spectacular, and the humour and characters made it a charming offering from the famous filmmakers.