The more things change, the more Wes stays the same. Asteroid City is another perfectly delightful Wes Anderson film, using an incredible cast to tell yet another story of twee quirky amusement covering up deeper melancholy. Its all the good and bad Anderson brings to the table, but its wholly his thing, and that thing AI could never fully create despite some incredible attempts to do so.
Under the guise of a TV show about a play, Asteroid City written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) takes place in the titular town about to celebrate a celestial event in a day or two. We meet Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), his oldest son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and his 3 young daughters, tripping across the US to get to their grandfather’s (Tom Hanks) house. Along the way, their car breaks down in Asteroid City, where Woodrow is in a science competition against other kids like Dinah (Grace Edwards), whose mother is famous actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) is also at the Junior Stargazer awards to present, but probably also there to help investigate the strange readings Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton) is receiving at her observatory where the asteroid hit centuries earlier.
Sometimes I would love to be in Wes Anderson’s head. While quarantine in 2020 drove many to their breaking points, Wes got inspired to find a way to quarantine a cast in a movie, crafting a crazy scenario only he could conjure into existence. When the movie is just inside the play “Asteroid City” the story shines. There’s all sorts of threads and stories going on in that town that are interesting or fun. It’s great seeing newcomers like Maya Hawke, Jake Ryan, and Tom Hanks try Wes Anderson characters on to see if they fit, and they mostly do. Old Anderson favorites like Rupert Friend, Jeffrey Wright, and Tory Revolori having a blast fitting into their little parts. And Jason Schwartzman gets the Seth Rogen treatment, transitioning from supporting player to lead pretty easily and holding his own with a pretty interesting emotional story across from Scarlett Johansson. I wish a couple of the story threads got a little more time to really land that emotional gutpunch the great Wes Anderson films usually pull off.
This might be the first time Anderson’s cast betrays his movie. The meta “TV show within a play” text only exists to get Wes’s favorite recurring players onscreen. It doesn’t really add anything to the movie, except a few jokes, and most of the time the black and white TV show story derails the more interesting narrative so we can watch Ed Norton, Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston, and Willem Dafoe cook. Usually an excuse to get those people onscreen makes a movie better, but in this case, a more straightforward tale of Asteroid City with some of those people in little side plots might have been a better decision narratively. Wes, not all your friends have to be in your movies, they’ll understand.
There was a time where Wes Anderson constantly not living up to his great potential would have pissed me off. But as I mature and get older, sometimes you just gotta let people be who they gonna be. So let those square shots, cuetsy creatures, and weirdo characters be plentiful Wes. If we get lucky, whatever madlibs jumble you come up with next could be Tennenbaums or Fantastic Mr. Fox like special, and in the meantime, your die hard supporters will love you all the while.