I’m currently reading Tom Hanks’ second book of fiction (The Making of a Major Motion Picture Masterpiece). In the opening few pages, a writer and filmmaker are talking, with the writer explaining how he’s never walked out of a movie and there are no bad movies. He basically claims that every movie has at least something you can appreciate. The filmmaker talking with the writer agrees and is impressed by this.
I heard another actor say something similar in an interview, talking about how movie critics don’t take into account all the time and money put into making a movie, and the hard work of everyone on the crew, spending a few years working on a project only for a critic to crap on it. They followed that with, “None of those people went into the project wanting to make a bad movie.”
Hanks also has said in a few recent interviews, that he’s done a handful of movies he didn’t like. And while most of his body of work is good (it’s strange his last 3 movies were disappointing – Elvis, Otto, and now this), there’s something he and other actors don’t understand about bad reviews when they’re merely thinking of their hurt feelings. A movie might cost a family of 4 around $50 for tickets. You add popcorn, soda, and snacks – you’re looking at close to $100. And if they have to sit through a horrible film, they don’t get a refund. They just wasted time and money. So instead of an actor like Michael Caine who, upon people telling him how bad the “Jaws” sequel was that he was in, merely smiled and said, “Well, I bought a new house with what they paid me” – perhaps actors should feel bad about what audiences have to sit through, when they made millions to make it.
So Tom Hanks can add this to his list of movies he made that he doesn’t like, and how he didn’t realize while filming it would be this tonally inconsistent and incohesive story. [Side note: in his later years, oftentimes when Hanks is in a role, it feels like you can tell he’s “acting.” The voices he uses, as Colonel Tom Parker and in this, feel phony]
The Wes Anderson whimsy is so, so annoying in this film. He’s always been hit-and-miss when tackling dysfunctional families and grief. This is a big miss, and with the best cast you’ll see in a movie all year: Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Bryan Cranston, Matt Dillon, Adrien Brody, Steve Carell, Hong Chau, Hope Davis, Tilda Swinton (who I think is one of the best actresses of the last 20 years), Jeffrey Wright, Willem Dafoe, Liev Schreiber, Fisher Stevens, Margot Robbie and Jeff Goldblum (although those last two were basically cameos).
Stylistically, the film is interesting. The black and white of an old teleplay in 1955 works, as do the beautiful pastels (all shot beautifully by Robert D. Yeoman). The problem is that it was written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, and they give us a story that could have worked, but doesn’t.
The characters are all miserable, and all speak with the same deadpan cadence. Instead of making any of these people feel authentic, it feels like a bunch of quirky bits that don’t fit into a film. It’s strange that Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman) is a war photographer, with his 4 kids in tow. His wife has just died and he’s finally telling his kids. He has an affair with a famous actress (Johansson), takes a photo of an alien, has a father-in-law (Hanks) who hates him and a son who’s a genius (Jake Ryan). Yet his emotion never changes from the deadpan. How in the world does Wes Anderson think this makes for interesting viewing? Sure, it’s funny when Johansson asks him if he wants to see her naked and he doesn’t answer. And I did laugh about 7 or 8 times (when the alien arrives, when we watch the kids in the “Junior Stargazers” group get together), but a few laughs don’t make a good film. And the best laugh came when the UFO was landing, and a long object came out of the bottom of the spaceship. My wife leaned into me and said “Anal probe.”
When a fan tells actress Midge Campbell (Johansson) how she liked a movie where she played an alcoholic and how nobody else liked the movie…Midge tries to defend the fact that some people liked it. That was humorous to me because I had almost the same conversation with Elliot Gould at a Lakers game, telling him how much I loved “Capricorn One.” But I digress.
So, the movie is narrated by Bryan Cranson, who kind of does a Rod Serling/Edward R. Murrow style introduction. He tells us that a legendary playwright named Conrad Earp (Edward Norton)
Is putting on a new play – Asteroid City. We then see it as a stage play and in the form of a movie. Yet every time they go back to the narrator, it takes you out of the story. Anderson is going for some Meta humor here that just doesn’t work. One of those scenes involves the movie, and Cranston walking onto a shot, everyone looks confused, and he says “Oh. Am I not supposed to be in this scene?”
Yawn.
There’s a side story about the director of the play (Adrien Brody) living behind the stage of the production, because his wife (Hong Chau) kicked him out. Those scenes are dopey, and just made me think of “Birdman” (Michael Keaton) and the character Brody played in “See How They Run” last year.
Other scenes in the desert city reminded me of “Nope” and lots of it felt like Anderson was trying to channel the early Coen brothers with wacky characters (for example, the idiotic scene we get three different times, that shows hooligans in a hot rod with flames painted on it, shooting at cops pursuing them). It also felt like the Coen’s with the music choices – Jarvis Cocker, Tex Winter, Slim Whitman (and didn’t he sing to martians in Mars Attacks?!). It was nice to hear “16 Tons” although you could barely hear it.
The hotel manager Steve Carell plays is idiotic, always listening to people complain and saying “I understand” or asking people in the morning what kind of juice they want: “Orange, apple, or tomato?”
Alexandre Desplat provided a nice score, and the set designs were good. The film was just too boring and needed more emotion and energy.
I thought of a scene where one of the kid geniuses is always doing crazy stunts asking people to dare him to do it. When he explains why he does this, it breaks your heart. Why couldn’t the movie have had more moments like that.
A budding romance with two kids, feels like Anderson was trying to capture the magic he had in his brilliant film “Moonrise Kingdom.”
I thought of ending this review mentioning two scenes. One is where an acting class is told to act out a performance they saw where the character was sleeping. I will say this. The audiences for this dull movie will be experiencing that very thing. And, there’s a scene where the star of the play tells the writer that after 600 shows, he still doesn’t understand the play. Well, the audience for this movie will feel the same way, too.
2 stars out of 5.