It’s not often you find people going to a movie because of a director, but Wes Anderson has such a unique voice and a style that every time he directs a new film, it’s almost a celebration. His latest outing, Asteroid City, is possibly the most Anderson-ish movie. A film packed with big screen names, designed with an inch of its life, and a story told in a way that you find yourself watching actors playing characters. At least, that’s what I think we are watching.

A writer, Conrad Earp, has created a tale of a recently-widowed war photographer who takes his three young daughters and his son, Woodrow, to a small nowhere town famous for having a crater from an asteroid. While there, he meets movie star Midge Campbell and starts to form a relationship with her. Things are going fine until the creator is visited by aliens, and the town goes into lockdown.

Like most of Anderson’s films, the plot is often simple and is written on one side of an A4 sheet. Yet this is a director who takes the tale’s simplicity and makes it a complex journey into the human condition. He could have easily made a parable of life in a lockdown situation. Instead, he starts the whole thing like a televised version of writing a play for the stage.

Filmed in black and white and shot in academy format (square-screen), we get introduced to Conrad Earp as he puts together his opus and his actors about to perform this three-act production. When the film goes from behind the screens to the actual show, we are given a wide-screen, full-colour presentation in which the whole town can be covered by a 360-degree spinning of the camera, a road running through the city that has a car being chased by the police running up and down, and the arrival of the space cadets, a group of children and their families arriving to receive awards for scientific experiments.

Anderson’s quirky attitude is playfully represented here by these experiments, including a rocket backpack, a weapon and the ability to project an image on the moon. Setting the whole thing in the 1950s allows Anderson to inject a time when life seemed more straightforward, with a soundtrack of 50s tunes, none instantly familiar but fit perfectly to the events and characters on screen, with a colour palette made of bright blues, peach, and browns.

His deeper examination of his creations skips from the backstage antics to the production, with wandering actors having a sense of crisis as to what they are doing, an actress, obviously modelled on Marilyn Monroe, who finds herself in abusive relationships and good at comedy, who wants to be taken more seriously as an actress and a person, the whole time being narrated by the host.

This is often playful, often rambling but always interesting to watch. After Anderson’s previous misstep, The French Dispatch, this is much more a film that works, with moments of pure hilarity delivered in deadpan comic brilliance. At the same time, everyone is completely committed to Anderson’s strange vision. Usual players Jason Schwartzman, taking the lead as the widowed Augie Steenbeck, Adrian Brody, as a stagehand who sleeps in the theatre, and Edward Norton as the playwright, are this time joined by Tom Hanks as the wealthy grandfather of Steenbeck’s children, who doesn’t want his daughter buried in the middle of nowhere in a Tupperware bowl (although the daughters wish to their mother to stay concealed as they are wannabe witches). It’s that strange. Even Jeff Goldblum appears as the alien wanting the meteor back that caused the creator.

Asteroid City will not be for everyone. Wes Anderson is an acquired taste. Yet his films are to be cherished, as they always look immaculate, are often very funny and have so many great actors, you are just amazed how he managed to pay them all. This is one of his best efforts, and fans of the director will love it. Others find the whole thing confusing and challenging to get to grips with. That’s perfectly fine. Anderson is not for everyone, but those who get it will get this delightfully quirky tale.

4 out of 5

Director: Wes Anderson

Starring: Jason Schwarzman, Scarlett Johannson, Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Tilda Swinton, Steve Carell, Jeffrey Wright, Jake Ryan, Grace Edwards, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Leiv Schriber, Steve Park, Jeff Goldblum, Matt Dillon, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie

Written by: Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola

Running Time: 104 mins

Cert: 12A

Release date: 23rd June 2023