Monday, 21 April 2025

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)


Quirky days are here again! The latest get-together Anderson's troupe of fave actors drops them in the desert, Nevada or thereabouts, in a stylised 1950s of A-bomb tests, governmental Cold War paranoia and talent competitions for precocious kids. The colours are appropriately garishly primary, the dialogue overflowing with wit delivered at a breakneck speed and the characters all fitted with at least one eccentric aspect each from the director's box of foibles. The leads, insofar as they get slightly more screen time than the others, are Jason Schwartzman's father of three girls and recently widowed photographer, and Scarlett Johansson's disillusioned actress, who get talking. Then a UFO lands and an alien briefly pops out just to have a look, just because it's that time and place.
It's made clear that all of this is within a black and white TV show with a Twilight Zone-style narrator introducing each coming scene and some characters from the main production reproduced by actors in the 'real' world of the TV show. More meta than matter. Still, Anderson's trifles, even when so unfocused and rambling, are more inventive than most things out there.

5/10

No comments: