Ticket 2 Ride

One expects a strange and quirky experience watching a Wes Anderson film. Asteroid City (2023) is the epitome of that statement. Anderson and Tim Burton make the trippiest films these days.

Anderson, co-wrote, co-produced and directed Asteroid City. His past films include: The French Dispatch, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tannenbaums, Rushmore and Bottle Rockets. If you have seen any of these films, you know what you’re in for, but Asteroid City, is the most ambitious and challenging yet for a viewer.

The film’s structure is quite challenging to follow. There is Asteroid City the play, a film about the play, and the film that we see about all of it including the backstory of the play. Anderson jumps from the play to the film to the backstory, and back and forth. Title cards help the viewer to have a general sense of the story, as told in three acts and an epilogue. Even the narrator of the film within the film gets confused and shows up in the film he’s not supposed to be narrating. Don’t worry, there is a quiz later and you have to pass to close out of this blog.

Anderson has assembled a diverse, ensemble cast, including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan and Jeff Goldblum. Bill Murray, who has been in nine Anderson films had to drop out after he contracted Covid. Steve Carell took over the part. Tom Hanks plays a wealthy, retiree who is also the grandfather of four kids. His part is less offbeat than most of the other parts. Scarlett Johansson looks and acts like a younger version of Annette Benning, but her character is more like Gloria Grahame.

Bryan Cranston plays the narrator/presenter, a Rod Serling/Edward R. Murrow type personality, who is filming a show about the making of the play, Asteroid City. Don’t worry, it’s far more confusing than my review will make it.

Asteroid City is a fictional place in Arizona, where a meteor made a sizable crater, and where a town tries to capitalize on it in a three-day celebration, which is the reason for these offbeat characters being there. Several brilliant, teenage, science students are recognized for their achievements as part of the celebration. During an evening program, a space craft appears and an alien is lowered to the ground, quite anxious about these strange Earthlings. The alien, played by Jeff Goldblum, takes the meteorite and lifts off.

The film/play takes place in the 1950s, where the art deco colors pop and the cinematography blends real people with CGI desert colors and textures. The “film” is the play being portrayed by the actors as if it’s reality. The background of the “play” is photographed in black & white, the “film” is in the garish colors that look more like a Southwest painting. Make sense? No, it doesn’t, but seeing it twice makes the story vaguely more clear.

Anderson filmed Asteroid City in Spain, even though it looks like the American Southwest. The mountains are fake, the buildings are fake, the cacti are fake, everything is created for the set. All that is missing might be Franco Nero on a horse with his Django hat.

In Asteroid City, who cares what is real and what is balsa wood scenery. In a Wes Anderson film, he creates a little community where even the characters appear mildly confused. The story-within-a-story-within-a-story is a familiar storytelling device to bend reality and keep the audience a little off-balance. Here, Anderson raises the stakes by adding another layer of fiction. Is it all worth it? Asteroid City is assuming and clever. For nearly two hours, Anderson puts the viewer inside of his trippy, make-believe universe where you switch between a film, a play and a TV show. This wormhole tries too hard at times and leaves you scratching your head at times, but mainly it’s a harmless, giddy joyride into Wes Anderson’s amusement park of the mind.

In all of the craziness, the story includes characters that are recovering from the loss of someone important and it gives them a chance to come together and deal with that loss. That’s kind of strange thing to have in the middle of this otherwise bizarre story of an alien encounter and its aftermath. The alien might have been the smartest being by not sticking around.

4/5 cacti