Asteroid City: Maybe Wes Anderson Should Go Back To His Small Cast/Budget Days

It’s safe to say by now that you will know if you like Wes Anderson.

No one is going into a film like Asteroid City saying to themselves “huh, I’m not sure if this is for me, might want to give this Wes Anderson guy a shot!” (reasonably, of course there’s going to be ONE PERSON who exists who says this)

But in all honesty, Anderson’s mix of quaintness, direct style and endearing characters have morphed into whimsical genre movies with a very deliberate styling to them. To me, the results have been mixed recently.

While The French Dispatch was enjoyable for it’s feel like a New Yorker magazine come to life (even though parts didn’t really hit with me), Isle of Dogs didn’t work in a number of ways.

And it looks like Asteroid City is another one of those Isle of Dogs for me.

Asteroid City is another differently stylistic film in terms of how the story is presented: set in a town in the 50s called Asteroid City, a group of characters are there for a junior stargazing event when something happens that changes their lives forever.

There are a number of issues with the way the film is presented, but Anderson’s direct, deadpan style just feels off for what the film is trying to convey.

The film is about loneliness, depression and giving into the uncertainty of life even when you feel like you have things figured out. These are themes that Anderson could certainly do well with, but the tone just doesn’t have the emotional heft that makes it compelling.

Now, Anderson has used deadpan wit and effective drama before in films like The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited and Rushmore. The difference between those three and Asteroid City is scope.

The three aforementioned films are smaller casts with a definitive main character and a plot progression that helps supplement the humor and postmodern look of Anderson’s style. Asteroid City has a rather large cast of character that the film wants you to get to know, but it’s 100 minute length just doesn’t give you much time to do that.

It’s clear that the film’s main protagonist is Augie (Jason Schwartzman, in a hideous beard but we will get to why), but the film doesn’t give you a lot to know about Augie other than his wife died and he’s rather coldly direct for someone whom you should sympathize with.

A lot of the performances in this movie, including Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson, share the similar type of acting that was in films like The French Dispatch and Isle of Dogs: incredibly direct with not much in the way of emotion.

This can work in some of his films, but in this, coupled with his nostalgia-laced visual style, the performances result in a rather dull, uninteresting slog to sit through. It’s a shame because I’m a fan of Anderson’s visual style, but in this it just becomes distracting to the overall point of the film.

And yet, there’s another issue with the film as well: it’s needless meta narrative. Again, meta narratives aren’t a problem (The French Dispatch‘s was good despite it’s flaws), but Asteroid City had me wondering at the end of the film why the meta sections were there.

What is the meta narrative? Well, the movie you are watching is actually the play that is written by a playwright (Edward Norton) and is narrated by an “Our Town” like narrator (Bryan Cranston).

That means the film has a narrative where the movie you are watching is actually a play that is being created and the actors who are playing the characters are playing actors playing the characters.

What was the point of it? My best guess was to show the power of art in real life to inspire us to find connections.

Did it work for me? No, it frustrated me.

Asteroid City is a slog of a film that should have honestly been lesser in scope for its own good. The large cast of characters (and large group of big name actors) really just feel like something that Anderson decided to do merely because he could.

Honestly, I do like it when talented directors are able to get a sizable budget and great actors to work on their projects, but I’m starting to feel that maybe Anderson needs to scale it back in the next film.

One of the main criticisms that I profoundly disagreed with when it came to people who didn’t like Wes Anderson is that he was all style, no substance.

If we were still talking about his first 5 movies, it would be a statement I would rightly scoff at.

But after the last three including Asteroid City, he’s definitely veering into that territory.

The Wiz DOES NOT RECOMMEND Asteroid City