Steve Carell in Asteroid City [Pop87 Productions]

ASTEROID CITY
Directed by Wes Anderson
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

WHEN a new Wes Anderson film comes out, you can hear the cultural commentators’ tummies rumbling as they get set to devour another thoroughly baked piece from the table of a director who has created his own genre.

Asteroid City is exactly what a Wes Anderson film is expected to be – an original, if elongated, tale rendered in his special Technicolor palette, and packed full of superstar actors playing oddballs.

And we are so used to Anderson’s oddballs there are few surprises. The convoluted setting – we are watching a TV show within a theatre production within a film – feels like a parody of how Anderson approaches the relationship between the viewer and the action.

Asteroid City is a two-horse desert town. It’s home to a massive meteor crater, a diner, a one-pump petrol station and makeshift motel.

A convention of cosmologists and student stargazers are gathering to show off their inventions, and Woodrow (Jake Ryan) has travelled to this strange spot with his father Augie (Jason Schwatzman) and three little sisters.

Augie harbours a terrible secret. The children’s mother died a month ago and he has yet to find the right moment to inform them of their loss…

Other characters swan in and out, adding quirky interest, but not overly layering the plot upwards until a creature from outer space zooms down and gives all a surprise.

As usual, Anderson has a cast of household names. They just keep coming, risking the film becoming a game of spot the cameo.

Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Scarlet Johansson, Margot Robbie, Liev Schreiber, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Jeff Goldblum… and then off-stage we have a side yarn featuring Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe. This quartet of big ticket stars are just an aside.

Hidden among Anderson’s trade marks – the symmetrical scenes, offbeat characters, and a passion for 50s Americana – there are big themes. Grief and death, love and hope, laws and morality. Jeff Goldblum plays the alien. What could be a pivotal moment has no straightforward sci-fi metaphor with a key or a clue to what it is Anderson aims to achieve.

Maybe it is down to the viewer to decide. Maybe we should not worry too much and enjoy the very pretty pictures he makes.

Either way, Anderson can claim another, less straightforward, triumph to add to his collection.