Asteroid City
4.5 out of 5 Stars
Director: Wes Anderson
Writers: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rated: PG-13 on appeal for brief graphic nudity, smoking and some suggestive material
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) – Studio Synopsis: The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition) is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.
Review: You probably don’t remember. There was live theater before there was cinema. We had radio and television too. Wes Anderson is here to remind us of the past with his movie about a fictional television broadcast exploring the behind-the-scenes of an imaginary play that takes place in a familiar place that has never been visited. It doesn’t exist. Well, it did for a moment in Chinchón, Spain. Maybe it’s still there.
Growing up in Utah in the 1980s, there were numerous stories about “downwinders.” “Downwinders” were people who worked at or lived within a relatively short distance from the Nevada Test Site where they tested nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 1960s. When I say, “relatively short distance,” I mean large swaths of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
I also spent a large part of my childhood watching no-budget sci-fi films that were either in public domain, cheap, or so obscure that the rightsholder would never notice that it played at the Murray Theater in nowhere Utah.
Utah also has some cinematic history. John Wayne shot a western or two here.
In high school I was a drama kid who lettered in theater like athletes letter in sports. No, I never got a jacket. They didn’t come in all black.
Take all of this seemingly unrelated information and stick it in the head of an incredibly creative mind and you could make a cool diorama or, if you are Wes Anderson, you could make a movie.
The central narrative of “Asteroid City” is about a group of strange, intelligent, and inventive children who at the pinnacle of their youthful success are knocked off their podiums by an alien visitation and the bureaucracy of the military and government as they decide if anyone from Atomic City should be allowed to leave.
Forced to spend their days among newfound strangers, a rainbow of relationships develops between the youth and their parents. Plans are hatched and awkward romance blossoms. It's about being caught in between here and there in the relentless search for human connection.
I might prefer the complexity of “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” but outside of the dual framing devices, “Atomic City” is blessed with a pleasant simplicity. You might have a hard time, like I have, nailing down a succinct synopsis, but it all makes sense when you watch it.
For this journey Anderson has assembled a fantastic cast of new and familiar faces. This includes Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke, Stephen Park and a dozen more. There’s a deadpan-screwball comedy aspect to the script that probably shouldn’t work as well as it does. Anderson has always been a master of establishing tone and the rules that guide the worlds he creates.
I didn’t feel like Anderson’s last film, 2021’s “The French Dispatch,” was nearly as interesting as the bulk of his resume. The ideas were good, but the film itself was something of a minor mess. Not a disaster, but not cohesive. “Atomic City” feels more complete, and I believe that there are layers to the writing that I’ve only started to consider. I’ll be happily returning to “Atomic City,” a place filled with the misinterpreted folklore of my childhood created by a stranger who knows me all too well.