ASTEROID CITY

The hype preceding Asteroid City had expectations high. After all, The French Dispatch and The Grand Budapest Hotel are Wes Anderson’s impressive calling cards. His new, 1950s pastel-pastiche includes a plethora of big-names that ensures a hit, surely? (Tom Hanks, Steve Corell, Scarlett Johansson, William Dafoe, Mat Dillon, Adrien Brody, Margo Robbie, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, to name a few.) However, one gets a sense that darling Wes-i-poo’s was trending and the Who’s Who of the Hollywood set were falling over each other for a bit part. (A bit like getting/not getting an invite to the Met Gala – the film to be seen in?)
As you settle down into your seat, it’s clear much time and focus had been taken on the ‘writerly’ introduction. Is it Broadway play? A TV-show about the making of the play? A film? All three? The central performance is set in the American desert, where this particular small town’s claim to fame is the landing of an asteroid, with the asteroid specimen still in situ. Participants of the ‘Junior Stargazers and Space Cadets Convention’ arrive, in particular one grief-stricken widower and his children. ( A remarkably, un-charming family.)
The narrative is partitioned between title-cards, and the humourless narrator (Bryan Cranston) who is shot in black and white in juxtaposition to the colour ‘reality’. These bookends do much to drain the film’s energy and pace, and coincidentally, the audience’s patience.
Bored, worryingly, one’s mind starts to wander, for instance, the Tupperware containing the ashes of the children’s dead mother, is patently too small for the job. (Anyone with cremated remains in the cupboard can tell you, that a more sizeable container would have been needed.) 
Not even the appearance of an alien (Jeff Goldblum) stealing the asteroid to inventorize it, lifts off. Given, that the post-war era included the dawn of the Cold War, the civil rights movement and Rock n ‘ Roll, the film’s narrative is hackneyed, and the caricature-characters about as interesting as the wait for a wifi connection.
In terms of performances, it is Rupert Friend as the  good, ol’ homespun, love-struck, cowboy, Montana, who steals the show. With of course, a nod to Tom Hanks’s perennial charm as the father-in-law, Stanley Zak. You WILL find a decent line up of 1950’s automobiles, including a pointless cameo appearance by Road Runner, who like the rest of the cast, didn’t quite know why he was there.
This film is a crafted, highly-stylised homage to the era, but it also favoured style over substance, and as such, fails to satisfy. To use good ‘ol space vernacular, “failure to launch!”

Rating: One sputnik shie of the moon