It is time for another Wes Anderson film.  His newest one is Asteroid City, which I saw with my dad.  We had planned a little make-up for me being out of the country for Father’s Day, and I posed the add-on of seeing a film together as is my weekend routine.  When I showed him the trailer for today’s movie, he said that it looked crazy.  It did not deter him.  For me, being used to Anderson’s work and a fan of it (mostly), I was simply hoping for something better than The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (2021).  By and large, Asteroid City delivered, though there are moments when it threatens to spiral out of control as did its immediate predecessor.  This is, admittedly, part of my preference for clean, linear plots.  Nonetheless, this one had enough of that Anderson charm to keep me laughing and thoughtful throughout, and that is worth something.

Remember what I said a moment ago about Asteroid City threatening to spiral out of control?  This is because it is told as a sort play-within-a-play.  The title refers to a stage production written by Conrad Earp (Ed Norton).  We are brought into the process of how he imagines his creation by a host (Bryan Cranston), who treats this as a show detailing this segment of Conrad’s life.  The host narrates the setting for the eponymous play, a tiny, dusty, desert town of the same name where thousands of years ago a space rock created a hole in the ground, the remnants of which are kept under a cage at the bottom of the crater.  Before continuing, I should provide some guidance as to how I am going to describe this to you.  There are sort of two stories going on at the same time, although they both relate to what you are watching.  The trailer says nothing of the Conrad parts, and they are mostly present to add another layer of illusion to the proceedings.  I will delve into the meaning of this later.  For now, I am going to focus on the part of the plot that is the play, which corresponds more to what you see in the preview.  Yet, when I introduce characters, do not be confused by the two names I give them.  The first will be their name in the play, the second will be that person’s name in “real life,” and the one in parentheses will be the usual one with which we are all familiar.  Confused yet?  Good.  We open with Augie Steenbeck/Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzman) arriving in Asteroid City with his four children.  There are three little girls, seemingly triplets, and his oldest, his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan).  It is for Woodrow that they have come to this middle-of-nowhere place, for there is a Junior Stargazer’s convention taking place there in labs next to the crater.  Augie is not in the best of moods.  Three weeks previously, his wife (Margot Robbie), passed away.  He had been keeping this secret from his children, but he finally admits it to them not long after they get to their destination.  He does so at the prompting of his father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks), as part of his conditions for coming to pick up the girls.  They are also not the only attendees.  As a further note, given that this is a Wes Anderson film, understand that there is a whole host of people in this movie, and they will be introduced as needed.  Just know that there are some pretty incredible actors and actresses playing bit parts.  At any rate, the other major appearance is from Midge Campbell/Mercedes Ford (Scarlett Johansson), a famous Hollywood star.  Her daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards), is another Junior Stargazer.  Everything is proceeding as one would expect, the collected young geniuses showing off their whimsical inventions.  Again, remember, Wes Anderson.  That evening, as those collected gather in the crater to witness an astronomical event, they are treated to something unexpected.  Descending upon them, bathed in green light, is an alien spaceship.  It hovers over them for a moment, and from the bottom comes a rather surprised looking alien (Jeff Goldblum).  It quietly and as surreptitiously as possible, takes the meteorite from its cage and leaves.  Overnight, Five Star General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), who is the government’s representative for the convention, quarantine’s the diminutive hamlet.  Those that are trapped there are assured that it will only take a week, but they are forbidden to make contact with anyone outside of town.  The Junior Star Gazers ignore this order, and soon there is a festival of people wanting to see where the aliens landed.  It is also helped by Augie, a photographer, who had sent off the picture he snapped of the extra-terrestrial.  During the intervening time, Augie and Midge grow close to each other, and sometimes in some rather adult ways.  So, too, do Dinah and Woodrow.  This part of the story will also be examined further in a subsequent part of the review.  For now, on the evening before the quarantine is about to expire, the same flying saucer returns the space rock to its place, having apparently inventoried it.  Though General Gibson initially declares that everyone will have to stay there for an additional week, he soon receives word from the president that they are all allowed to leave.  Despite the attempt at secrecy, everyone seems to know about the incident anyway.  Midge leaves before Augie and his family, without saying goodbye, though she does leave a post office (P.O.) box address for him.  Instead, with one last stop at the diner, Augie, Stanley, and the rest load up the car and hit the road.

Interspersed between what I just detailed of Asteroid City are the aforementioned scenes that show how the majority of what you are seeing is really a stage play.  If you were confused by any of what I described, there is good reason.  There are times when I am not sure that the movie itself totally understands what is happening.  To return to one of themes on which I had been harping, this sense of contrived reality is something you often see in Anderson productions.  It is cute and whimsical, though one could make the argument that with this one he is hitting it a little too squarely on the head.  William Shakespeare once famously wrote that “All the world’s a stage.”  Indeed, this saying has become so ubiquitous as to be obvious.  Anderson usually uses his prevarications, to me, to poke fun at big budget productions.  We know everything we see in a Marvel film is fake, yet through the use of computer generated images (CGI), they try to make it all seem like it is real.  There are not such attempts on Anderson’s part, and its hokeyness has always seemed refreshing and somehow more real than its contrived counterparts.  With this one, with the play-within-a-play concept, it strips away a layer of that process.  It is akin to looking behind the curtain to see the Wizard of Oz before he can put on his show.  One could say that this is Anderson trying something new, though that argument does not stand up to scrutiny when you consider that the same camera work is on display.  It is that, the comedic elements, and the sentimental moments that kept my interest.  In short, it is not his best work, but passable.

Speaking of those sentimental moments in Asteroid City, the overarching idea I came away with is escapism.  To build this film back up a bit, it fits with what I harped on a moment ago with Anderson being more obvious about how fake is everything.  I could flex my Catholic muscles on the direct correlations to faith in the movie, and how awful they are, but that, too, would be the expected route.  Instead, to pay-off an earlier set-up, I will delve into the relationship between Augie and Midge.  What caught my attention is when they both admit to being wounded.  In response, they have come to this far off place to get away from their problems.  Pointedly, they both admit to not wanting to deal with their issues.  For Augie, it is coping with the loss of his wife.  In Midge’s case, she has had a lifetime of hurt caused by abusive relationships.  For Catholics, healing from these emotional wounds comes from confronting them honestly, with conversations with God to guide the process.  One could look at a sojourn in the desert as an opportunity to do this, but the movie muddies this journey with the insertion of aliens.  It also does not help that Conrad says he does not believe in Heaven, which basically means God.  The closest we get to a true confrontation with Augie’s feelings is in a scene outside of the play.  He walks off the set when chaos erupts after General Gibson announces a new quarantine.  He speaks with Schubert Green (Adrien Brody), the play’s director, that he does not understand what is going on.  It takes him going outside the theater and happening upon the woman who would have played his wife.  They rehearse the scene that would have been in the play had her part not been cut.  It is about him dreaming of meeting her on the alien planet.  It gives him closure, even if Augie is in the guise of Jones Hall.  In a sense, it lets Augie know that his wife is in Heaven, though he does not want to believe it.  Prayer does these things, even if the movie does not want to acknowledge it.

Most will look at Asteroid City and say it is weird.  I cannot deny that fact.  It also has a brief nude scene in it.  For whatever reason, Anderson cannot seem to help himself in his films with this kind of material.  At the same time, there is enough here to not only have me laughing consistently, but to tug at the right number of heart strings.  Hence, this is a mixed recommendation.