‘Asteroid City’ reviews: Wes Anderson’s latest debuts at Cannes to strong reviews and some dissent

With “Asteroid City,” has Wes Anderson directed one of his best movies yet or is it a misstep in an otherwise lauded career? Is the new film, due out in June, a return to form after “The French Dispatch” or a disappointment following his 2021 ensemble anthology? Those are the questions critics are asking following the debut of “Asteroid City” at the Cannes Film Festival, where the response to Anderon’s new film seemingly traveled to the moon and back.

“Like any movie by Wes Anderson, ‘Asteroid City’ is the epitome of a Wes Anderson movie,” Indiewire critic David Ehrlich wrote in his rave review. “A film about a television program about a play within a play ‘about infinity and I don’t know what else’ (as one character describes it), this delightfully profound desert charmer — by far the director’s best effort since ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel,’ and in some respects the most poignant thing he’s ever made — boasts all of his usual hallmarks and then some.”

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But on the other end of the spectrum, there’s The Hollywood Reporter critic David Rooney. “Asteroid City” is an “archly cutesy new film [that] joins the ranks of Anderson’s more distancing work, notably ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ and ‘The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,’” Rooney wrote, citing two other cult favorite Anderson movies that split critics upon release. “The writer-director seldom seems more self-satisfied than when he’s spinning his wheels. Anderson has always been like a smart kid playing in a hermetically sealed sandbox of quirky action figures and quaint toys. Here, that’s quite literally the case as he strands a bunch of people in 1955 in a tiny fictitious desert town in the American Southwest with a population of 87, isolating them there after an alien encounter that prompts the government to step in and impose military quarantine.”

For The Daily Beast, Esther Zuckerman found herself on Team Wes, and like Ehrlich, found “Asteroid City” to be Anderson’s best film since “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” It’s a “thoroughly hilarious piece that coalesces into something almost haunting,” she wrote. “‘Asteroid City’ is thick with Americana, but the charming hootenanny of it all works in tandem with the deep questions the director is asking.”

For Variety, Owen Gleiberman boo-hissed “Asteroid City” – and like Rooney, compared it unfavorably to two favorable Anderson films, “The Life Aquatic” and “The Darjeeling Limited.” 

“Then there are the Anderson films that even most of his fans don’t pretend to like all that much — the fussy, top-heavy, narratively batty yet stretched-thin concoctions like ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ and ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,’” Gleiberman wrote. “‘Asteroid City’ is one of those, only more so.”

“Asteroid City” is due out June 16 via Focus Features and features an all-star cast led by Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Steve Carell, and the usual Anderson players like Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Liev Schreiber. The studio describes the film as follows: “‘Asteroid City’ takes place in a fictional American desert town circa 1955. Synopsis: The itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention (organized to bring together students and parents from across the country for fellowship and scholarly competition) is spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.”

What the plot summary doesn’t reveal – but something critics noted in their reviews – is that the film includes a framing device set during the production of a television show. Here’s how Vanity Fair critic Richard Lawson explains it in his review. “Asteroid City” “is a mid-century television special about the making of a stage show by a Thornton Wilder-esque writer played with foppish melancholy by Edward Norton. The play, ‘Asteroid City,’ is brought to vibrant life for us in the audience – though not, necessarily, for the imagined audience of the fictional broadcast,” he wrote. (Like Ehrlich and Zuckerman, Lawson also found the movie to be Anderson’s best in years.)

But that conceit is maybe one of the elements that caused consternation among those who didn’t vibe with “Asteroid City,” suggested Deadline critic Todd McCarthy. 

“The show-within-a-film conceit doesn’t really pay off; arguably, it complicates the work with little to show for it, and general audiences, as opposed to art film aficionados, will be baffled as to what’s going on,” McCarthy wrote. “There is even one more layer to the proceedings that, arguably, is more of a bother than a plus. But otherwise, this is a fresh, original, and disarming creation unlike anything else you might have seen with a degree of stylized storytelling that is notable and often exciting.”

Anderson’s films have been hit and miss as awards players, but comparisons to “The Grand Budapest Hotel” certainly bode well. That film won four Oscars – including Best Score and Best Production Design – and received nine overall nominations. “Grand Budapest” was a Best Picture nominee and earned Anderson himself three nominations, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

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