Asteroid City (2023) Some breaking bad news for the oh-so twee filmmaking satirists of Twitter and Tik Tok....the makers of those deadpan parodies of Wes Anderson movies........(as in "Wes Anderson's 'Lord Of The Rings', etc, etc...)
Sorry, folks.....you will never make an imitation Wes Anderson spoof any better or more accurate than "Asteroid City"........cause Wes beat you to it by directing this one himself. It's the ultimate Wes Anderson knockoff.....the most Wes-iest of his tinker-toy, live action, full color picture book cartoons.
I'm not sure there'd be any real difference, other than the cost, between sitting through this film or opting to browse through the inevitable $80.00 coffee table book "The Art Of Asteroid City" .....(which I can only assume will hit the Barnes & Noble racks in time for Christmas.....)
Both will feature gorgeous color photography of the title town, a tiny 1955 food-gas-lodging pitstop sitting in the middle of the American Southwest desert.
Both will feature a large cast of well-known actors posed with fussy detail amid this picture postcard setting, In both film and book, they'll look as precisely arranged as the mannequins of prehistoric families in the Museum Of Natural Science dioramas......
Except in the film, the actors will move around a bit. But not much. Most of the movement will come from Anderson's camera, relentlessly tracking sideways back and forth from the same fixed distance.
In the film, though, you will hear them rapidly spit out that dry, obtuse Anderson-ese dialogue. And delivered in the same sing-song, robotic flatness of actors playing emotionless aliens in 1950's sci-fi movies. Some of it might sound vaguely witty, but never hold your breath waiting for Anderson to let you in on the joke........
Now I suppose I'm expected to tell you what the movie's about......or what I think it's about.
Beats me. But here's what unfolds.....
Since we're in the mid 1950's, the framing device sends us into a black and white artsy-fartsy "backstage" TV show. (A very clever send-up of CBS's typical Sunday morning programming). It's all about the writing, casting and performing of the play "Asteroid City", as put together by high strung, tempermental New York artistes.
From there, we see the play as if performed in the actual Asteroid City, filmed in ripely widescreen dazzling Technicolor pastels. (I'm unsure whether it's a movie version of the play or a representation of the play as imagined in the mind of its playwright. Feel free to hash that out amongst yourselves......)
I won't deny that the film tosses in a few individually enjoyable moments. Anderson loads it up with subtle chuckles as he skewers the collision of staid American values with the onslaught of super-science......nuclear war, rockets into space and the possibility of alien invasion.
But those moments are few and far between. The rest of film's as remote and flat as the cardboard mountains surrounding Asteroid City. Wes Anderson has so solidified his devotion to stylized tableau filmmaking, he's cut himself off from all but his most devoted admirers.
For the rest o us, "Asteroid City" seems more like something that should hang in an art gallery rather than projected on a screen. Admired......but never involved in.
Since he's now made the ultimate frozen-in-amber Wes Anderson movie, where could he go from here? We'll all stay tuned.....2 stars (**)>
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