Asteroid City
This movie is confusing as hell. I suspect a lot of people think this but are scared to say it, worried that they are missing some deep intellectual meaning. No, you are not. This movie doesn't make sense, and frankly is bad.
Even if it has some profound statement about the complexity of human life, the fact that there is a plasticine alien dropping down a rope to pick up a rock, makes you question whether Wes Anderson is just making fun of you now. Maybe he is trying to see how absurd a movie he can make before you will actually stop watching Wes Anderson movies. He has made some good subtle movies. Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of the best animated movies you'll see. But, he was working from master storyteller Roald Dahls classic children book then.Maybe this would have been better as an animated movie.
Anderson must also have something incriminating on every actor in Hollywood, because the number of A- list celebrities in this is absurd. Steve Carrell's role for instance is just to serve drinks to everyone. In every scene it seems a new famous face pops up. The problem is they are probably saying the same stilted boring dialogue as everyone else.
Despite having all these Oscar winners, and blockbuster celebs, the main character we follow is Jason Schwartzman who looks like he is one of the ugly Baldwin brothers. I had to look up to see if he was indeed related to Alec Baldwin, he is not. He is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and cousin of Nicholas Cage. Nepotism is alive and well in Hollywood.
Schwartzman plays the father of three young girls and one boy. Their mother has passed away, but these young children were apparently unaware. She had died, been cremated and her ashes put in a tupperware box all without the children knowing, so she was obviously an integral part of this family.
They are on their way to a convention at Asteroid City when their car breaks down. Here starts the first of many jokes that go on too long and falls flat. Something is wrong with the car, maybe it is an easy fix or it maybe it's catastrophic. Matt Dillon tells a long story about this happening before to a similar vehicle, but you really don't care. Again this scene might be symbolising something significant, or it might just be something that happens for the characters to speak Wes Anderson's quirky dialogue, who knows.
Asteroid city starts to become very busy on the day with lots of weird kids with famous parents, such as Scarlett Johanssen, who wears a distracting wig.
Geoffrey Wright, plays a General running proceedings, when the alien appears to steal the asteroid the town is named after. Queue a quarantine being put in place and lots of quirky unfunny scenes taking place.
Now comes the confusing part. That part of the movie is infact a play that took place years ago. Interspersed between the Asteroid city scenes is the documentary about the play with even more famous actors. The documentary is helpfully filmed in black and white so we can tell if we are watching the movie or the documentary. You see, the movie is very clever.
The documentary part is also hosted by Bryan Cranston, which is nice. I would have rather had seen Bryan Cranston on screen with Tom Hanks ( who plays Schwartzman children's grandfather). It would have been amazing to see these two great actors bounce off each other, but alas they are in different parts of the same movie.
So, that's it. Wes Andersondy things happen and in the end nothing happens, and you end up thinking “Is that it?”. Yes, that's it.
Oh Margot Robbie has a surprise appearance at the end, she is the mother who was cremated in the tupperware box, if you cared.
