Jonathan Sim
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You always know when you’re watching a Wes Anderson picture. Even if you don’t know what movie you’re watching, if it has a symmetrical composition, a saturated color palette, and smooth camera movements, you’re watching a Wes Anderson movie. Asteroid City is him doing his thing. A sci-fi romantic dramedy about a Junior Stargazer convention in an American desert town isn’t the gripping premise that you would go to a theater for, but when you’ve spent the last few decades making a name for yourself as a distinctive auteur, you’re going to have people show up for you.
Unfortunately, his style doesn’t work for everyone, and certainly not for me. Asteroid City is a bizarre, unwatchable film about aliens that alienates everyone who experiences it. It has everything you would expect from one of his movies. There are quick, subtle visual jokes and some fun moments of offbeat writing. However, this is the type of film that only an established director like Anderson could sell. This is a movie with a vague mix of genres, a vague premise, and not a lot of events that occur within the film besides people having eccentric conversations.
The screenplay explores all the themes that you would expect. It’s about relationships and growth, and it’s all told in a cosmic way. Nonetheless, everything Anderson is going for creates an empty viewing experience. Asteroid City is devoid of emotion, feeling like a long series of scenes where events you don’t care about occur. The thread running through these scenes is so unbearably thin. Although it’s occasionally fun and quirky, it offers very little entertainment value. There is no urgency, there is no goal, and there is nothing for you to care about in this movie.
Anderson has taken an all-star A-list cast that any up-and-coming filmmaker would dream of having and adapted them to his trademark style. While most films can only boast one or two big names in their trailers, this movie had a scrolling list because it couldn’t fit them all. Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Steve Carell, and Hong Chau are barely scratching the surface. Hell, Margot Robbie even shows up for a scene. However, when Anderson hires all of these actors, he directs them all in the same way. Every person in this film has the exact same speaking cadence and emotional depth.
Of course, Asteroid City has a revolving door of Wes Anderson regulars, including Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Tony Revolori, and Jeff Goldblum. We even see a few faces from The French Dispatch in this movie. It’s a shame that he has all of these cast members and yet none of them feel like they’re giving particularly challenging performances. They all sound like they could be reading off cue cards. And when you have so many characters, and you don’t care about any of them, the movie leaves you with zero emotional impact.
Anderson’s films exist in a heightened reality where nobody talks or acts as they do in the real world. However, Asteroid City takes it a step further to where nobody responds to events rationally. There’s a scene where Augie (Jason Schwartzman) burns his hand on a griddle, barely reacts, and then shows his burn mark to Midge (Johansson). She says, “Well, that actually happened,” and we cut to the next scene. Maybe some audience members like this. I do not understand what the hell this was supposed to be. This whole movie plays out like a long series of nonsense. Anderson’s style-over-substance approach is ineffective in this film. Although the movie boasts a unique atmosphere and Alexandre Desplat’s enchanting musical score, Asteroid City does remarkably little.
SCORE: 2/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 2 equates to “Terrible.” The film is almost irredeemable, and is likely a waste of time for almost everyone involved.
Disclosure: ComingSoon attended a press screening for our Asteroid City review.