Film Review: Asteroid City is a deliciously bonkers sci-fi story
Tom Hanks stars in Asteroid City.
- Asteroid City
- ★★★★☆
Those familiar with Wes Anderson’s cinematic quirks won’t be remotely surprised to learn that the grandiosely titled (12A) is a one-horse burg in the middle of the Arizona desert, where, in 1955, a small horde of amateur sky-watchers assemble for the annual Stargazing Convention under the watchful eye of the astronomer Dr Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton).
War photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) has yet to tell his children that their mother died some weeks previously, and is quickly distracted by the presence of the ennui-drenched TV actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) while he waits for his father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks) to arrive to deliver the bad news.
But just as Dr Hickenlooper is about to honour this year’s stargazers with their prizes, the tiny town experiences ‘a bewildering and bedazzling celestial event,’ forcing US Army General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) to shut down Asteroid City and seal it off from the outside world.
All of which, it should be said, accounts for only a small fraction of the meandering, multi-character, intertwined plot of , which Wes Anderson co-wrote with Roman Coppola: the movie also incorporates the playwright of the ‘world famous’ play Asteroid City, Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), on which the current film is based, and who we meet in the throes of creating his play in collaboration with many of the stars who appear in the Wes Anderson movie unfolding before our eyes.
Bonkers?
Deliciously so.
Beautifully designed — the little town looks like it was designed by Edward Hopper and Roy Lichtenstein — and as chock-a-block with visual gags as it is with Hollywood stars (the supporting cast also includes Bryan Cranston, Hope Davis, Steve Carell, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Matt Dillon and Margot Robbie), Asteroid City is a delightfully offbeat and charming sci-fi yarn.
(cinema release)
