Asteroid City
Year: 2023
Rating: PG-13
Length: 105 minutes / 1.75 hours
At this point, when I see a Wes Anderson film, I know what I’m getting. Not just the visual aesthetic or the almost monotone line delivery from every actor. Instead, there’s a framing that either brings the disparate narrative together (like in The French Dispatch (2021)) or acts as a lens (like in The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)). Now that we’re almost 10 years into this phase of narrative framing (with a few exceptions like Isle of Dogs (2018)), it’s finally gotten to the point of being distracting.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the base story that’s being told in Asteroid City (2023). It hearkens back to some of Anderson’s earlier works that dealt with the death of a loved one (a la The Darjeeling Limited (2007)). The science fair subplot was fun, and the whole military lockdown of the second half was entertaining. Just by itself, the core plot of Asteroid City—while perhaps too short for a full-length feature—is a great movie that pulls in all of Anderson’s tropes. Again, I know what I’m getting into with his movies, and this one is no exception.
My only problem with this film is its framing. There was only one segment from the framing that made me laugh out loud (partly because of Bryan Cranston’s perfect delivery). These segments almost felt too patronizing. Like, Wes Anderson wanted to be sure he got some heady points across to the audience, so he made them in dramatic black-and-white to emphasize what he was trying to say. These feel jarring and I don’t think they really add anything other than an extra layer to distance the audience from the ridiculous nature of alien contact. If only he was confident with the core concept, it might have been a better film.
An entertaining Wes Anderson film with some unnecessary framing, I give Asteroid City 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
