The famous American independent filmmaker Wes Anderson does not give up his recognizable, eccentric, baroque style. This time he strengthened the already standard star cast with some new strong trump cards such as Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson and Bryan Cranston, but still, “Asteroid City” was his weakest film in recent times. It seemed to me like a kind of stylistic exercise, as if Anderson wanted to prove that he is unsurpassed in scenography, mise-en-scène and direction, but we have known that for a long time anyway. The story itself here was far below his standard, and with somewhat metafilmic gameplay, this time he went a bit too far for my taste.
He set the action in a kind of retro-futuristic version of 1955 in a fictional town in New Mexico, Asteroid City. The plot of the play by the fictional playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) actually takes place there, and in the beginning some details are revealed by the narrator Bryan Cranston, and in the style of a movie from the fifties, we go to that fictional, bizarre town, where the standard group of bizarre and eccentric weirdos from all over the world will gather. generation.
And that strange Asteroid City seems very Andersonian unusual, one would almost think that it is an animated film, and a few young geniuses have gone there with their families. The place itself is named after an asteroid or rather a meteorite that once fell right there, and the situation will get complicated when aliens appear there and steal the meteorite in front of the gathered people. When people start talking about extraterrestrials, the government will try to cover it all up, and as usual it’s all exaggerated to the point of absurdity. However, unlike most of Anderson’s previous films, “Asteroid City” did not sit well with me.