Marvel movies get a lot of flack for being formulaic, repetitive, and pretty much the only thing that Hollywood is willing to finance these days. All of those criticisms are well-deserved. But each of them would be just as true levied against Wes Anderson films.

Don't get me wrong: Anderson is one of this generation's great auteur directors, and I've now seen (and, for the most part, loved) his entire filmography. His style is distinctive, his scripts fun and memorable, and his casts incredibly stacked. Starting with 2018's Isle of Dogs, though, thematic repetition and remarkably similar plot arcs started becoming clear in my opinion, and 2021's The French Dispatch solidified my skepticism. I still liked both films, but there started being holes in Anderson's otherwise near-flawless oeuvre.

His latest, Asteroid City, is a third strike in a row. The film opens with Bryan Cranston as a stern Rod Serling-inspired TV show host who solemnly informs us that the story to follow is purely fictional, merely a televised production of a play. From the get-go, this structure makes it hard to really care what's going on in the movie: the characters we meet are two levels removed from reality, actors playing roles in a play within a TV show within a film. This is reminiscent of a core issue with The French Dispatch, suffering an overload of mini-stories, but at least in that film's case the newspaper was covering purportedly true events. This apathy is quickly only heightened by a classic Anderson script full of robotic, matter-of-fact attitudes about death, aliens, family drama, and all sorts of other goings-on. That nonchalance, humorous in other movies, deadens the appeal of Asteroid City even more.

The play's core plot deals with Augie Steenbeck and his family's attendance of the Junior Stargazers Convention in the tiny eponymous town of Asteroid City. Augie (played by Anderson repertoire favorite Jason Schwartzman, who I never tire of re-remembering is the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola) meets a silly band of residents and visitors, including Jeffrey Wright as the Stargazer leader, Tilda Swinton as a scientist, and Matt Dillon (throwback, right?) as a car mechanic. We also get to know Augie's family, including Tom Hanks as a cranky father-in-law and Jake Ryan as his prodigy son. Various town and Stargazer Convention events lead up to an unexpected alien visit, and the fallout of the extraterrestrial interaction propel the remainder of the play's plot. 

Meanwhile, to drive home the fact that the play isn't real, the film keeps interspersing backstory about the writing and directing of the play by a stereotypical difficult playwright, Conrad Earp, who like all difficult artsy men in movies is played by Edward Norton. The lines between the two narratives blur and converge, like when Cranston "accidentally" shows up in the Asteroid City set or Schwartzman "leaves" the set to confront Norton. These are mostly tiring.

The singular strength of the film's script and acting is the romantic subplot with a mother (in the play) and actress (in the TV cast) played by Scarlett Johansson, who is the only actor to successfully toe the line between apathy, humor, romance, and pathos. Her presence, along with one moving scene with Margot Robbie, are shining lights compared with a lot of men (including some usual personal favorites Liev Schreiber and Steve Carrell) that fall flat. All the young actors, while obviously talented, are saddled with the now-rote Wes Anderson precocious child motif (first seen almost identical 25 years ago in Rushmore and more recently in the The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom). Only the three sisters, with their witchy and vampiric fascinations, are fresh.

From a broader filmmaking perspective, Anderson is still talented, from the train opening sequence to beautiful set design to distinctive cinematography. Also, Alexandre Desplat can do no wrong, and his score here is no different. But I hope Wes comes back to earth a bit.