In 1955, a TV host (Bryan Cranston) introduces a production of the stage play Asteroid City. Within the play, recently widowed war photojournalist Augie Steenback, played by actor Jones Hall (Jason Schwartzman) arrives in the desert town set in a retro-future for a stargazer convention with his teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and his three younger daughters. After Augie’s car breaks down, Augie calls his disgruntled father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks) for help!

Writer, producer, and director Wes Anderson continues to solidify his stylised signature to the possible detriment of attracting new audiences: title cards, symmetrical framing with a wide lens, a regular deadpan ensemble cast, and a textural DIY set design with pastel colours are all rigidly on point.

Whereas The French Dispatch found Anderson disappearing into himself, here he at least looks like he is having a bit of fun. Unnecessarily confusing, the story’s flow with a metatextual plot (a convention in a retrofuture staged as a televised play, presenting the creation of said play), the movie is however light, with witty dialogue delivered deadpan at high speed as our ensemble cast of thinly drawn oddball characters endures an enforced quarantine in the brightly coloured, kitsch town. Anderson’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic blends with existential questions of humanity’s place in the universe against a desert backdrop in the atomic age. With hints of Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks andEd Wood, the movie serves as ‘Barbenheimer’s’ little cousin.

Verdict: A beautiful-looking and humorous exploration of much ado about nothing. 3.5 stars.

Luke McWilliams, themovieclub.net