ASTEROID CITY REVIEW

Asteroid City begins as it means to go on, at a detrimentally listless pace. Set in a strikingly artificial desert town circa 1955, Wes Anderson’s latest is awash with shallow references to 50s and 60s film and TV, immediately apparent with Bryan Cranston done up to look like Rod Serling. The opening credits play over a freight train speeding through a Looney Tunes desert landscape, recreating the opening minutes from Bad Day at Black Rock.

The impressive cast sport the costumes of classic stars from movies I’d much rather have been watching. There’s Scarlett Johansson looking like Elizabeth Taylor from Giant, Rupert Friend in Paul Newman’s denim and Stetson combo from Hud, Adrien Brody doing Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the black and white scenes inside the Actors Studio sequences feature recreations of iconic poses by the likes of Audrey Hepburn and James Dean.

The packed screening room I was in remained noticeably quiet throughout. Aside from the odd bout of chuckling from a couple on the back row, whatever humour was present in Asteroid City was met with telling silence. The dialogue exchanges between the numerous familiar faces are utterly inconsequential and so stiffly delivered, I found it almost impossible to keep up for more than a few seconds. Doubtless the delivery, like the ostentatiously artificial mise-en-scène, is deliberate. Still, this doesn’t make the film any good!

This feels more like a parody of a Wes Anderson film, overwhelmingly indulgent to the point of vexing incoherency, and, perhaps most disappointingly of all, lacking in any real heart. There’s plenty of referential style and very little – if any – discernible substance. Big fans of Anderson’s work will likely find enough enjoyably familiar material, however, and perhaps take away a deeper meaning.

1.5/5