June 28, 2023 – Wes Anderson's offbeat style of filmmaking has never been mistaken for realism, and his latest, and so far most successful film, is a soft, pastel vision of life and love with rounded edges. It is wholly inoffensive and charming.

A kind of a play within a movie, it celebrates the writer, in this case one Conrad Earp (played by Edward Norton of “Glass Onion”). The actors struggle to breathe life into his characters during the play. As the scenes and acts of this play unfold, the actors come to Earp seeking the meaning of their roles. Others in the movie seek the meaning of life as they pursue love.

Two characters who seem to epitomize this search are famed actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson of “Black Widow”) and war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman of “The French Dispatch”). The two gradually fall in love as they talk to each other through the open facing windows of their motel rooms. The distance between them remains the same, both physically and emotionally.

The same is not true for two youngsters who fall in love during the same period in Asteroid City, Augie's son Woodrow Steenbeck (Jake Ryan of “Eighth Grade”) and and Midge's daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards of “Call Jane”). These two spend a lot of time together, as part of a group of award-winning science students.

A related storyline has Steenbeck's car breaking down in Asteroid City. Steenbeck, a widower, calls his father in law, Stanley Zak (played by Tom Hanks) for a ride. Stanley's arrival turns into a series of arguments about how to tell Steenbeck's children about the recent death of their mother (played by Margot Robbie), and what to do with her ashes, contained in a Tupperware bowl.

The science students have come, with their parents, to Asteroid City to receive awards and recognition for their science projects. The awards are presented during a ceremony, at the town's meteor crater, by General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright of “The Batman”). The ceremony is interrupted by the arrival of a spaceship, and a tall, thin, humanoid alien, who picks up the asteroid and takes it away.

The military takes over the town and forbids anyone from leaving, or telling anyone about the alien. This leads to a flurry of activity in the sleepy little town. Despite the whimsical nature of this movie, the depiction of the military's futile efforts to keep the alien visit a secret is actually pretty realistic speculation.

Most movies nowadays feature muted color palates, but this film is lit up like a flamboyant water color painting, very heavy on the pastels. From the previews, it looks like the upcoming live-action “Barbie” film is also going to look like this one. I like this look. It makes some colors pop. It makes most other films look dreary. As part of the “movie within a movie” plot, some scenes are in black and white, like the ones in which the film's narrator, Bryan Cranston.

This movie is set in the 1950s, when there was more color in the movies, and no color on television. Some of the black and white scenes, including the ones with the narrator, are supposed to be a TV special about the play. Despite the film's disjointed narrative structure, I found the characters, with their vulnerability, confusion and longing, quite appealing. This film rates a B.

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