Asteroid City (PG13, 115 mins) In cinemas now.
Directed by Wes Anderson
For terrific light entertainment, here’s a film about inventions, scientists, the military, bombs going off in the desert and brief romantic attachments that covers the same sort of territory as Oppenheimer but has nothing of its moodiness and definitely no deep messages. It’s basically a spoof of the cowboy genre, classrooms and science competitions … and is enjoyably shallow.
It’s 1955. Augie Steenbeek (Jason Schwartzman) with his war photographer’s camera dangling around his neck and his unlit pipe in his mouth, drives his brilliant budding scientist son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) to a stargazers’ competition in a fictitious place in the desert made famous for the landing of an asteroid 3000 years ago. Woodrow’s little sisters, played by triplets Ella, Gracie and Willan Faris are along for the ride. On arrival in Asteroid City, the family’s Mercury station-wagon breaks down, resulting in a hilarious hoist scene with Matt Dillon as a mechanic. Enter the rescuer: Augie’s rich father-in-law, Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks). The stage is set.
It’s a film within a play, within a writer’s studio, skipping lightly between all three: from studio, to play, to film and back again. Cameo roles abound: Edward Norton as writer Conrad Earp, Adrian Brody as Schubert Green the half-dressed director of the play, Bryan Cranston as its host; and in the film are Tilda Swinton as a nerd astronomer, Maya Hawke as an earnest teacher, Scarlett Johansson as film star Midge Campbell, Margot Robbie as an actor playing an Elizabethan who’s also Augie’s recently dead wife in so-called real life, Geoff Goldblum as the Alien, Jeffrey Wright as a no nonsense general, Rupert Friend as a singing cowboy called Montana and many more.
