Asteroid City review: Wes Anderson encounters 1950s stargazers, actors, and one peculiar alien
Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, and Tom Hanks lead a starry cast in this beautiful but rather empty endeavor
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Wes Anderson is still using many of his old tricks. His latest, the 1955 set Asteroid City, will feel familiar to anyone who has seen any of his previous movies. It has many eccentric characters who all speak in monotone and a few carry around a precious prop that obviously means much to them and defines their character. A camera around the neck or a notebook and pen in the hand or back pocket. There’s some sort of narrator only tangentially related to the film’s main story. That plot is many layered; it’s about a play within a TV show within the film. The sets and costumes are intricately detailed and there’s always something sumptuous to look at on screen. Familiar things can be good, but can they maintain their appeal for decades?
Jason Schwartzman is the man with the camera, Augie Stenbeck, a worldly and successful photojournalist. He’s also a widower whose wife just died and he’s traveling with his 14-year-old son and three younger daughters to the titular fictional city. The son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), he of the ever present notebook, is one a few teenage stargazers who have gathered in this small Southwest town for a space convention. Each of the five has distinguished themselves in their exploration and inventions and are here to be awarded. Along for the ride come an assortment of parents and teachers plus the townspeople who run the one hotel, manage a military compound, and an observatory where the ceremony for the five young geniuses is taking place.
These characters are played by actors—old and new to Anderson—like Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hanks, Hope Davis, Steve Carrell, Liev Schriber, Jeffrey Wright, Rupert Friend and Maya Hawke. But that’s not all. You see this story is actually a play and all these people are characters in the play. It doesn’t stop there. Edward Norton is the playwright, a mid-last century American genius, perhaps a Tennessee Williams or an Arthur Miller type. Bryan Cranston appears as a narrator in a TV documentary being made about the playwright and his latest production. Not to mention that catalyst event that emotionally disturbs all these people is a visit by an alien entity.
There’s a lot of detail and many characters but what’s it all about? Stenbeck’s grief for his wife, his tetchy relationship with her dad (Hanks) and growing attraction to Johansson’s movie star, Midge Sinclair, is one narrative thread. Norton’s playwright and his creative struggle is another. Various characters fall in love or make connections. Yet because of the structure of the film—the story within the story—none of them feel urgent or especially resonant. There are moments of brilliance both from the performers and from the writing. But they never cohere together into a complete story. Some of the threads are resolved off screen, some aren’t resolved at all. Just as the audience is getting invested in one story or the other, Anderson goes into a new and completely separate tangent.
One breathtaking diversion features Schwartzman as Jones Hall, the actor playing Stenbeck, delivering a stunning audition to Norton’s playwright that ends up with the two men making a deeper connection both personally and professionally. Both actors are marvelous reacting to each other and the audience is swept away in the moment. Schwartzman, in particular, elevates this and many other scenes, absolutely making the most of playing the lead character.
Matching him is Johansson who adapts her performance to fit Anderson’s style by underplaying. Hawke and Friend make for a beguiling young couple who begin to tentatively fall in love. Their performances are told completely physically; just by the way they look at each and inhabit the space between their characters. In a smaller role Adrien Brody offers a funny poignant portrait of the mad tortured artist. Hong Chau joins him for one melancholy scene infused with so much story that one wishes this was a subplot that Anderson made more of.
As this is an Anderson production, his collaborators on camera (Robert D. Yeoman), costumes (Milena Canonero) and production design (Adam Stockhausen) all deliver impeccable work. Fully detailed and ravishing to the eye, every frame looks like a tableau come to life. In particular the relationship between Stenbeck and Sinclair is told in conversations as they sit apart, each in their room but talking to each other through their windows. Stunning to look at and yet the fact that they are always at such distance away from each other hints at why the film remains at a remove.
Anderson builds gorgeous worlds. They are filled with such detail that there’s always something to marvel at. Yet narratively Asteroid City doesn’t fully come together. It remains a beautiful artifact but, despite a few moments of resonant storytelling, is too easily forgettable.
Asteroid City opens in select theaters on June 16 and in theaters everywhere on June 23
74 Comments
Wow that’s nearly parody level. Reminds me of the SNL skit about critics being overy effusive about the sopranos and half of the quotes are things like “ooooooh, sopranos!” – entertainment weekly
I wish Wes Anderson would just make movies instead of making ‘Wes Anderson movies’
I don’t see why; at least it’s consistent, and there are plenty of “just movies” out there already. People who like that stuff know what they’re getting, and people who don’t know what they’re missing.
I’ve watched all of his films – and I’ll go watch this one when it comes out – but it’s hard to see the director of such stylised but deeply human, layered and empathetic movies such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel get so frequently wrapped up in making sure his aesthetic is on screen that he often forgets to add any depth to his characterisations or storylines in a lot of his other pictures.
Yes and no? It was a dozen years and some real nadirs (I’m looking at you, Darjeeling Limited) between Royal and Grand Budapest; the results may not always be as transcendent as the highs, but at least he’s bumping around in different sandboxes while remaining consistent. I don’t see how the problem can simultaneously be “I wish he’d stop making Wes Anderson movies” and “I wish he’d keep making the Wes Anderson movies I like best.”
Every other director makes not-Wes-Anderson movies, I don’t need him to make them too.
Mostly I wish he’d get back to co-writing his movies with Owen Wilson. Something major was lost when that ended, even if all the superficial elements were still there.
I think the point is that he used to make movies that were about more than the aesthetics, and not all that long ago. Grand Budapest was a great combination of performance, humor, plot and style (though I know some felt it leaned too heavily into the latter). Dispatch meanwhile left me cold. It was all quirk and set design.
Grand Budapest was two movies ago; several movies before that people were making similar complaints about “all style and quirk” as he released Life Aquatic and Darjeeling. They can’t all be winners, but I wouldn’t declare him DOA because the latest run.
I haven’t seen Darjeeling but think Life Aquatic is an excellent example of quirk and style being used by Anderson in service of the story (it’s also nearly 20 years old). He’s sort of teetered on the opposite for a while, with Budapest probably walking right up to the edge, and the risk has been there for a while that it becomes more about style than story. To me Dispatch was well across that line and it sounds like this one may be as well.
I actually loved Darjeeling. That’s the thing with Anderson, everyone has their favorites. My list below will look so much different than anyone else’s.Loved: Royal Tenenbaums, Grand Budapest, Moonrise Kingdom, Darjeeling LimitedLiked: Rushmore, Bottle RocketDid not like: Life Aquatic, French Dispatch
I also love ‘Darjeeling Limited’, and it is in fact one of my favourite Andersons. I’ve often wondered how much of it is due to being one of three brothers in my family; that dynamic from the film is very relatable to me.
Loved: Life Aquatic (by far his best), GBH, DarjeelingLiked: Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, Fantastic Mr Fox, French DispatchLukewarm: Moonrise KingdomDid not like: Isle of Dogs
Yeah, i like Life Aquatic but at the time there were all these complaints that it didn’t “mean anything”. As if all movies had to have a moral or something.
I think it’s because the general conversation isn’t “If you enjoy what Wes Anderson does, here’s another great example” – it’s “This is great cinema, and you MUST see it”.I disagree with the latter. Wes Anderson movies are perfectly acceptable when judged against Wes Anderson movies. Beyond that, if you aren’t in it for the flattened colors and flattened performances then you aren’t likely to enjoy it. He makes highly individualized movies that require appreciation of certain very stylistic choices he makes to appreciate them.I’m obviously not a fan. I can’t stand his characters and the performances tend to leave me wandering the house looking for something more engaging to watch. “Twee” is the word I usually use when describing his work. I CAN, however, appreciate that he puts a hell of a lot of work into what he’s doing and can see that if you like it, you’d really like that he never really deviates. Just accept that it’s not “mainstream” and that means the mainstream is probably going to at least partially reject it, and we’ll get on fine.
Honestly the conversation I see the most (including here) is people falling over themselves to say “stop shoving this twee shit down my throat.”
Which to be fair for a lot of people is more manufactured ire than actual injury.Honestly I came to the review because I had one of the “It’s great cinema, what is wrong with you” friends who swore that one day I’d see what he was talking about. I’d heard “sci-fi” and figured I’d check reviews, it still looks way too Wes Anderson for my tastes. It’s hard not to jump in, it’s still a bit triggering from old arguments.
In my case can you settle for “It’s twee shit, so how the fuck do I know if it’s any good or not?”, and then I don’t bother watching it?
I really tried to get into Wes Anderson—I tried watching both The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch since my marriage fell apart a few years ago. They’re beautiful to look at, but then again so is much of Fellini’s work—and I can take or leave Fellini. Though I enjoyed sinking into his worlds, once I was there I was going, “Okay, where’s the story?”, only to get a lot of incident but no real story—so like Lurch of the SoCal, I end up popping in another Blu-Ray or Surfing the Stream looking for something that engages me.No, I didn’t see any of his early films because I have an allergic reaction to “Bill Murray Wants an Oscar” performances, and I’m suspicious of any director whose favorite actor is one of my least favorites. Oddly, I don’t have the same reaction to Sofia Coppola’s work, though I just once I’d like to see what she’d do with something big and epic like her father at his best does.
It is noteworthy cinema, whether you like it or not. I don’t think that anyone who likes his films would say that you MUST see it if you know you don’t like his work, and I’m not sure what exactly makes you think that’s the case outside of the fact that a lot of people like a thing you don’t like.
Mainly because I HAVE known the “You have to like this, it’s important cinema” guy, and having heard that this was a sci fi variant figured I would check the reviews. Some directors are capable of delivering a movie that is different enough in cast or subject or what have you that it breaks the mold and becomes something worth watching even if you aren’t a fan of earlier works.Not here, apparently. But I still hope some day to find out what makes them work for others.
There are in fact thousands of movies that are not Wes Anderson movies that you can watch.
Why? There are almost no auteurs left in cinema. It’s nice to see a director who A. resists losing his personal style to take big paychecks and B. has a style he loves and keeps playing with.I think people get so distracted in his visual style that they completely ignore how sad almost all his films are. The French Dispatch is a film entirely about death and nostalgia, yet people only seem to see it as a bunch of pretty pictures.
“Almost no auteurs left in cinema.” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Kelly Reichardt, PTA, Fatih Akin, Miranda July, Kar-Wai Wong….
Basically what I feared from the trailer, which means to me it will probably be sub-B-. The French Dispatch was so flat it was like a parody of an Anderson movie.
I feel like I saw a completely different movie than the people who say this. It was a rich anthology of incredible performances and interesting stories tied together by the overarching plot, the complete opposite of flat.
Yeah, I really enjoyed its adherence to the short story form. It didn’t seem at all designed to hang together as a full film, but that’s what a lot of people seemed to expect and fault it for.
I feel like his distancing devices make it hard to empathize with the characters, and that’s why most people would call it flat. Although there was a lot of information about the characters, it was never presented in a way that made me feel anything for them. While the performances were good, I never felt like I was getting into the characters heads. I never empathized with them, because they never seemed real. The revolutionary students section especially felt like brief character sketches from an article that was more about the event than it was the people. It’s a great artistic endeavour, and an interesting film to dissect, but it felt cold, and was perhaps the closest any of his films has come to being a diorama.I don’t feel like the story was tied together by the overarching plot, in fact I wouldn’t really call it a plot at all, rather a framing device that didn’t affect the individual stories at all. We never really got a sense of how the magazine itself functioned, because we mostly saw the reporters on assignment. We never got to know who the publisher was, and why his death affected everyone so much. It’s obvious why they were affected (death of a long time friend), but we never felt those feeling along with the staff. We never got to see the little things that make you miss someone when they’re gone.Most of his films take the form of some other media, and French Dispatch’s magazine structure was always going to feel disjointed. I think the film accurately conveyed that disjointed nature of a magazine, and interestingly portrayed how an author shapes their subject, even when it’s a real event. However, this many levels of mediated reality didn’t work as well for me as Grand Budapest Hotel, which portrayed several layers of historical record, but maintained an emotional core. Even Grand Budapest is fairly unemotional compared to Anderson’s early work. I think for someone who knows the New Yorker’s history there were probably allusions that may have fleshed out the story a bit, but I am not one of those people. If I was introducing someone to Anderson, I probably wouldn’t start with French Dispatch. It’s not really accessible without being familiar with his other work.
Every new WA post moonrise kingdom, follows the same pattern for me: I’m initially let down on first viewing only for it to coalesce and and click for me on subsequent viewings. Only exceptions to this has been Isle of Dogs (still not great on repeats) and ironically MK which I loved at first viewing, but fell short on later watches.
“beautiful but rather empty endeavor”So just like every other Wes Anderson movie?
Some of them aren’t especially empty.
I don’t think any of them are empty. Some are like candy, sweet and light, but even those are unique departures from the rest of mainstream cinema.
That’s probably a better way to put it. They all have distinctive aesthetics and comforting idiosyncrasies, but they don’t all have a heart that particularly resonates with me. A lesser Anderson film is still a pretty damn good film, but an excellent one (I’d personally say that there are five of those) is sublime.
Fantastic Mr. Fox is the only one I’ve seen and I don’t think it’s empty.
If you liked Mr Fox, you should see Tenenbaums – I think it’s his most successful at filling his dollhouse aesthetic with real (occasionally dark!) emotional stakes that anyone with a family can empathize with. And if that works for you, Life Aquatic and Rushmore too. The others, I’d argue, are progressively emotionally emptier (still gorgeous though).
I think Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel are exceptionally good movies with moving stories.
I think GBH (er, Grand Budapest Hotel, not Grievous Bodily Harm), is the highwater mark. It balances the quirkiness and kitsch with genuine warmth and humanity.
I’m a pretty big fan of his films, but I get why his stylistic/narrative flourishes can be off-putting or exhausting to some. Every new Wes Anderson film manages to be the most Wes Anderson film than his previous ones. You just have to be on his wavelength or it’s not gonna do it for you.If I’m completely honest with myself, I’m not sure that he has ever managed to get back to his early-career high of Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums.
I think those early movies are more suffused with emotion and stand up the best, though I do enjoy the live-action cartoon modes of Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel.
That’s the irony: If Wes Anderson had always and forever just been a creator of confectionary dollhouses with gorgeous art direction, funny lines, and unrealistic zero-stakes characters, I’d be ok with that and expect it. I’d enjoy him as like a very talented music video director. But it is BECAUSE he also created Rushmore and Tenenbaums and Aquatic, which pack real emotional weight and have characters that grow and change and realize their faults that I expect better from him and get disappointed by his more surface-level movies.
I liked the Isle of Dogs a lot, it felt different narratively.
I think his style particularly lends itself to stop-motion animation – I really enjoyed ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ as well.
Agreed. I like most of Anderson’s films just fine, but we regularly revisit Fantastic Mr. Fox in our household. It is one of our favorite movies, full stop.
What’s off-putting with this new movie, at least to me, is the nesting-doll angle— why is it a play within a movie within a tv show? (Or whatever order it is.) Like why couldn’t it just be the story? It almost makes it feel like Anderson deliberately does not want to engage with the emotions of it and just wants to make some hay about artifice or something. (Of course, maybe that’s the point, but he’s done it before.) And maybe it’s explained, or at least discussed, in the movie… but it seems like the central story could’ve just been the story.
Which is not to say I won’t see this one, I’m sure I will eventually, but the extra layers make me want to see it less.
Maybe Wes finally got around to seeing Synecdoche, New York and thought it was a cool idea!As rife as the internet is with “[Film] but directed by Wes Anderson” parody videos, I really think the only guy who can truly parody Wes Anderson is Wes Anderson.
I think it’s worth pointing out that one of the definite forebears of Wes Anderson’s style, it’s the eightieth anniversary (or near enough – premiered 10/6/43, so eighty years and six days) of The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp – which is one of Anderson’s favourite films. Definitely, you can see the stylisation here, but also a lot of warmth and humanity that his films have been lacking lately:One of my absolute favourites.
I’ll have to check it out. At some point, I really have to sign back up with Criterion Channel.Perhaps not a direct lift, but his use of framing and space reminds me of Jacques Tati’s Playtime:
Colonel Blimp is one of those films I’d happily recommend to anyone. It’s not a war film, though it is set during two; it’s not a comedy, though it is funny; it’s not a romance, though it is full of love and longing; it’s not a drama, though it reaches deep into a well of humanity. It’s all those things…and not. And somehow…more. It’s sweet, but never saccharine.Stephen Fry said it addressed “what it means to be English”.
It looks conformist, but it’s a bit antiestablishment. Churchill tried to have its production shut down, as it was produced at time during WWII when it wasn’t going so well for the UK (1942). Powell & Pressburger…er…had to “borrow” the Home Guard uniforms and trucks.Actually, you know what? I’d say it’d be worth watching it alongside Casablanca – both these films dealt with their respective countries’ place in the war, and the world, but with different takes from different sides of the Atlantic. The American one deals with whether or not they should even bother entering it; the British one wonders if it’s worth going on fighting it if it means…losing yourself. And like Casablanca, a lot of those involved were actual refugees from the war that was raging. I remember some Triple J DJ describing the difference between The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” and a typical Britpop track from contemporaries like Oasis or Blur or Pulp (wait, I’m going somewhere with this), and that was The Verve used sincerity, whereas the others tended to use irony. That’s what’s striking me about the difference between Blimp and the later Wes Andersons: Blimp is sincere, whereas Wes is slipping into overly-ironic territory. Jacques Tati’s PlaytimeHoly crap, I’ve got to see this. Not least because it’s French mid-century modern in 70-damn-millimetre (even if you’re meant to hate the sets). I loved Mon Oncle, so I’m definitely tracking this down in 4K. I don’t know how he did it, but Tati still managed to inject warmth and humanity into sterile, grey mid-century modernism of his sets – for flat, shiny, impersonal architecture, there’s wit there.
It’s like a certain scenes in Wes’ French Dispatch clearly paid homage to this movie. You can see a lot of the elements there, including the orchestra soundtrack.
I’ve been on Gaspar Noe’s wavelength for a while and it’s not going so great
The bigger issue isnt that those things are exhausting it’s that theyre *not enough*. Hes too focused on that stuff and forgets we have to care about these characters
Looks like it only runs 1:45, which means I’ll see it. From the description above, I feared it was 2:30 or more.
It’s hard to find a movie under two hours anymore.
It’s no “The Midnight Coterie of Sinister Intruders”, by far Anderson’s most compelling work:
Now I want him to make a movie about a bunch of bodybuilders living in a remote desert town.A Steroid City
Pain and Gain in (a town near) Las Vegas.
An attempted ranking of all Wes Anderson films from the most emotionally real/character-driven/humanist to the least. (which I call the “arthouse-to-dollhouse spectrum”). Note this is NOT a ranking of their quality, which will vary according to taste: 1) Royal Tenenbaums
2) Rushmore
3) Life Aquatic
4) Bottle Rocket
5) Grand Budapest
6) Darjeeling
7) Mr. Fox
8) Moonrise Kingdom
9) French Dispatch
10) Isle of Dogs
I legit read your post as if it was being delivered by as a narrator in an Anderson film.
Reading comments here and elsewhere, I feel like one of the few people to truly adore Darjeeling, and that found Dispatch to be one of the best films of last year. Oh well.
If this movie manages to end in any way other than a transparently artificial chase scene, I will pay $200 American to the first person I see, whilst weeping tears of shocked, uncomprehendingly profound joy
What if I told you it ended with a giant beam in the sky and a giant army of killer aliens fighting an army of Wes Anderson characters on a big open field
GIANT ANTS! ON AN OPEN FIELD, NED NILUS!
What’s your Venmo?
I see that the lacking narrative is pretty common negative among some reviews I read. That’s disappointing. Then again, it was a tall task in trying to capture lightning-in-a-bottle that was his Grand Budapest Hotel, which had that fantastic fusion of writing and acting and narrative structure all around. None of his follow-ups (as decent as they are) even came close to that kind of brilliance and I am not sure if Wes Anderson would be able to again.Even so, I can’t be mad at him for making stories that he want to tell in his own way. He earned that with several of his classics.
I’m afraid that Wes might have peaked with The Grand Budapest Hotel. That movie had all of his positive qualities as a filmmaker rolled into one, and firing on all cylinders. Still looking forward to Asteroid City, but my expectations are increasingly tempered with each subsequent Wes Anderson film now.
I’ve never watched a Wes Anderson film, but this one appeals to me. I think the era and location are the main attraction. I may have to watch this and Oppenheimer in the same week just for balance.
Where did this idea that Wes Anderson films are empty come from? I keep seeing people say that Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums were good because they were emotional, but none of his other films have been.Have we been watching the same films? The French Dispatch was about the death of the newspaper industry and how time moves on. The Grand Budapest Hotel ended with Zero’s wife and child dying and the hotel falling into disarray and being forgotten to history. Even his lesser films like The Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited are all about grief and failing family relationships.There’s sadness and melancholy and a longing for the past in all his films.
Not being the biggest Wes Anderson fan around (I was one of the few who left the cinema very cold on his FIRST films) I say: leave the guy alone. He has a point of view and he is honest with it. Not talking to you dear reviewer but to some other guys here.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that Anderson’s films are sometimes out of balance in terms of aesthetic/emotion. And obviously it’s subjective, but I found Asteroid City to be deeply moving. The movie within a play concept heightens the emotional effect and seems to suggest Anderson grappling with his own approach to making art, asking big questions about what matters, what it means, what it’s for. Rather than supply easy answers, these characters, who are all wounded in specific ways, try to understand sometime more than they did when the story begins–with varying degrees of success. Count me in for this one. I suspect repeated viewings will reveal this one to be up there with Rushmore and Grand Budapest as among his best.
Yeah, this was a cake that was all frosting. No substance and by the end you’re pretty sick of it.
Somehow the Wes Anderson films I’m able to first see in the theater tend to stick with me, and the ones I didn’t see until at home I have trouble remembering much about at all, including many that people consider favorites.This one is pretty light and fluffy feeling, although I think there’s plenty of depth if you want to look for it. For me, I’d put it in the upper half for enjoyability (but it helps that I’ve seen it in the theater).
Johannson played Midge Campbell. Midge Sinclair was a real life Jamaican actress.
I know I’m really late to this party, but this review and a lot of comments I’ve seen about the movie feel shallow. The review dismisses the meta framing device out of hand as just being a Wes Anderson affectation, but it is central to what the movie is trying to do. To be fair, I also rolled my eyes hard when the movie started out with a TV show about a play. But the movie isn’t subtle that the TV show stuff about the play itself and the actors is important—the movie keeps going back to those elements. So much so that I started paying a lot more attention to them as the movie went on to see where things were going. The review does not even mention the scene near the end in the TV Show setting where all the actors at the class are chanting “You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep,” which practically screams “this means something! this scene is important to the movie!” (I think this movie shares a lot with Synecdoche, New York like a commenter says below). But the reviewer just wrote off a good chunk of the movie and focused on the alien story. I’m not claiming that the meta stuff makes it a good movie, or makes it that deep, or that Anderson pulls it off. But he is pretty clearly trying to say SOMETHING with it beyond “here is a whimsical alien story,” and it is disappointing that the reviewer didn’t even try engaging with it.
Even later to this party, but a quarantine, and a bunch of people communicating remotely? He’s at a minimum processing his COVID experience.