Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 1996)
Did not work for me. I could see how each separate bit was supposed to be comedic, or at least entertaining, but I was just waiting for it to be over. And I usually love metatextuality. For me, Anderson has a sort-of template of what a WesAndersonFilm is like, and this is merely the most recent exemplar off the production line. He is constantly 'laying bare the device' (ostranenie)– but it looks merely like a device, not what it reveals. (Not even Scarlett Johansson :)
Wikipedia:
Asteroid City is a 2023 American comedy-drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson, from a story he wrote with Roman Coppola. It features an ensemble cast including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan and Jeff Goldblum. Its metatextual plot simultaneously depicts the events of a Junior Stargazer convention in a retrofuturistic version of 1955, staged as a play, and the creation of the play. It is Anderson's homage to popular memory and mythology about extraterrestrials and UFOs witnessed in the Southwestern desert in close proximity to atomic test sites during the postwar period of the American 20th century. ...
Critical response:
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 74% of 309 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's consensus reads: "Asteroid City is unlikely to win Wes Anderson many new converts, but those who respond to his signature style will find this a return to immaculately arranged form." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100, based on 60 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 78% of filmgoers gave it a positive score, with 51% saying they would definitely recommend it.
In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called Asteroid City "terrifically entertaining and lightly sophisticated" and wrote, "The movie rattles cleverly and exhilaratingly along, adroitly absorbing the implications of pathos and loneliness without allowing itself to slow down. It is tempting to consider this savant blankness as some kind of symptom, but I really don't think so: it is the expression of style. And what style it is". John Nugent of Empire commended the film's unique visual and narrative style, writing, "[Anderson] remains cinema's most astonishing stylist, the rigour and detail in every frame never better", but warned, "It is occasionally a bit unfocused, and always a bit indulgent. If you don't like The Wes Anderson Film, you won't like this. But we others must hope he keeps making it."
In his review for Vulture, Bilge Ebiri remarked, "To the casual observer, Wes Anderson might seem like someone who either refuses to read his own press or has bought into his press to an absurd degree", alluding to criticism of Anderson's filmmaking style, but later argued, "There's a point to all this indulgence. Anderson's obsessively constructed dioramas explore the very human need to organize, quantify, and control our lives in the face of the unexpected and the uncertain [...] Asteroid City might be the purest expression of this dynamic because it's about the unknown in all its forms." Owen Gleiberman of Variety found the film similar to the "fussy, top-heavy, narratively batty yet stretched-thin concoctions" he saw in The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and concluded, "Asteroid City looks smashing, but as a movie it's for Anderson die-hards only, and maybe not even too many of them."
In his review for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane highlighted Johansson's performance as what "cracks the movie's ordered surface" and wrote, "Even if you regard the latest movie as a box of tricks, you have to admire the nerve with which Johansson, as Midge, delves into that box and plucks out scraps of coolly agonized wit. More deftly than anyone else, she traffics in the to-and-fro between the real and the imagined". Adam Mullins-Khatib of the Chicago Reader hailed the film as "a true achievement from one of America's most unique cinematic voices", complimenting Anderson's direction and screenplay, as well as the cast's performances.
Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 16 August, 2023 | Now: 16 August, 2023