Having been born in 1969, director Wes Anderson has no firsthand recollection of the 1950s. But his new movie, "Asteroid City," nevertheless captures much of the period's spirit and Space Age innocence, and we can feel his fondness for a time and place he never actually knew (but surely absorbed subsequently from — what else? — period films).
The picture's setting is the vast, sunbaked desert of the American Southwest (Anderson grew up in Texas), specifically a wide place in the road grandly called Asteroid City (pop. 87). The year is 1955, and I think it's relevant to note that, in the real world of the time, mutant spiders were prowling the Arizona desert in the lovably low-budget sci-fi flick "Tarantula." And that the year before that, in "Them!," it had been giant ants, spawned by atomic-bomb tests, that were running amok, this time in New Mexico. In 1953, in "It Came from Outer Space," an alien arrived on the scene, paying a 3D visit to our planet in a pretty cool flying saucer.
"Asteroid City" isn't science-fiction in the sense of those old films (although it also has an alien, and a saucer, and a number of atom-bomb explosions, too). But it acknowledges them, and the seemingly simpler world in which they arose, in its production design — which, as always in Anderson movies, is maniacally detailed and relentlessly symmetrical in its side-gliding camerawork. Although the movie was shot both in Spain and on location in Arizona, the look of it is cleverly synthetic, from its cardboard-ish cacti and possibly propped-up buttes to its agreeably washed-out color palette, which ranges among lemony yellows, melony greens and aquamarine skies adorned with cottony white clouds. The movie is considerable fun just to gaze at.
Then there's the story. I can imagine some people having trouble with the story (I know I did), because it's actually three stories at once. The movie opens on a black-and-white scene in a '50s-style anthology television show, with Bryan Cranston playing the part of a host resembling Rod Serling in the old "Twilight Zone" series. This gentleman is going to escort us on a visit to a play called "Asteroid City," which is being staged in New York and also turned into a movie — the one we're watching.
As we know by now, Wes Anderson numbers among his admirers many high-profile actors, quite a few of whom are delighted to appear in his movies repeatedly. For example, Jason Schwartzman, who made his first screen appearance in Anderson's second feature, the 1998 "Rushmore," is on hand here to play Augie Steenbeck, a photographer who has come to Asteroid City with his four kids — among them his brainiac teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan, previously in Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom"). Woodrow is here to be honored at an army-sponsored Junior Stargazer gathering, at which, like some other attendees, he'll be demonstrating a science project he's put together — a precocious invention that will be blithely appropriated by the military and put to who knows what uses.
But let's move along, because there are a lot of characters. Tom Hanks is on hand to play the father of Augie's wife, who's been dead for three weeks. (Augie hasn't found the right time to tell his kids about their mom's passing: "They do know," he says, "although just barely.") Scarlett Johansson plays Midge Campbell, a Hollywood movie star who's in attendance with her daughter, also a Junior Stargazer. (Of course, Johansson is also playing the actress who's playing Midge Campbell, but let's not wander into those weeds.) Jeffrey Wright is General Gibson, who's presiding over the Stargazer gathering. Edward Norton is a playwright, Conrad Earp. Adrien Brody is a director, Schubert Green. Tilda Swinton is an astronomer named Dr. Hickenlooper. Willem Dafoe plays a guy named Salzburg Keitel. And just when I thought I couldn't keep track of even one more famous face, who should pop up — possibly as some sort of directorial prank — but Margot Robbie.
What we have here, I think, is too much of a good thing. The army of glossy talent overmatches the story, which is grindingly whimsical. There are some snappy lines ("I love you like a sister, except for that one time in the bathroom"), but the deep feelings about families and time that Anderson gestures toward are never made entirely clear, so we never really feel them. It's a stylish picture, of course, but when it's over, Anderson's celebrated style may be all you remember.
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