I’ve always enjoyed Wes Anderson with one exception, French Dispatch. And when I say exception, I hated the depressing black and white, couldn’t relate to any of the characters and the three stories amounted to an emotional zilch.
But Wes Anderson, with the help of Roman Coppola, has returned to an artistically creative plateau with Asteroid City. The hyper-colorization is delightful (unlike the garish pink of the new Barbie movie and its overly long trailer…but I digress). Anderson and Coppola layer present day news into the story in chef’s kiss perfection: our recent government ‘reveal’ of alien possibility and the last election’s mayhem to name a few.
In addition, the dialogue is super cute, witty (the child actors are precious!) and yet perfectly blended with deeper mind bending ideas like the mantra the cast says in unison, ‘you can’t wake up, if you don’t fall asleep’. The latter I interpret as meaning we need to start over, in regards to our political system and our concern for social media over fellow humans, but I fully realize my subjectivity.
The acting is topnotch, Scarlett Johansson and Jason Schwartzman have great chemistry, Jeffrey Wright is a linguistic genius, Tom Hanks is back to his adorable Mr. Rogers self, and Steve Carrel is wonderfully straight-faced. Simply put, every actor, no matter how small a role, was terrific.
I’m shocked that it’s only at 71% Rotten Tomatoes, but it did just come out, so there’s room for ascension. Since I don’t read reviews until I’ve worked the ideas around in my own mind first, the only detraction I can think is that I wasn’t moved to tears, but yet I was tickled pink. Hence, I highly recommend this film.
