Film Review of the Week

Comedy

Asteroid City (12A)

Review: Since his eye-catching 1996 debut feature Bottle Rocket, Oscar-nominated writer-director Wes Anderson has honed an instantly recognisable aesthetic that trades in gorgeous production design and costumes, snappy dialogue, stop-motion animation and gleefully eccentric characterisation. When Anderson is on fire, his weird is truly wonderful, exemplified by my two favourite pictures from his oeuvre, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Rushmore. Asteroid City nestles comfortably in the middle of his wildly creative pack alongside Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Limited.

Set in a desert town somewhere in America’s southwest, population 87, this whimsical comedy of manners unfolds as charming and impeccably framed tableaux that contemplate grief, the creation of art, celebrity and the scientific community’s long-running debate about whether we are alone in the universe (Anderson’s riposte is typically droll). An ensemble cast including blink-and-you’ll-miss-them moments for Margot Robbie, Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe enlivens fanciful flourishes but a core emotional component suffers sunstroke and never fully recovers. The writer-director embellishes one of his more simplistic narratives with a waggish framing device (presented in black and white and square aspect ratio), which allows characters to blithely break the fourth wall and underline the gorgeously stylised artifice of everything on screen.

A television host (Bryan Cranston) introduces a programme dedicated to playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) and the genesis of his stage work Asteroid City about a convention of young astronomers in the summer of September 1955. Behind-the-scenes shenanigans involving Earp, his cast of actors, the play’s egotistical director Schubert Green (Adrien Brody) and his wife Polly (Hong Chau) contrast with the widescreen Technicolour of a dramatisation of the play. In this lustrous fiction, widowed war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) and his brood, including academically brilliant eldest son Woodrow (Jake Ryan), arrive unceremoniously in Asteroid City for a Junior Stargazers and Space Cadets convention.

Woodrow and four other children are being feted at a ceremony hosted by General Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright). Glamorous actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) attends with her daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards), another honouree who piques Woodrow’s interest when she discloses, “Sometimes I feel more at home outside the Earth’s atmosphere.” Shortly after a speech by quixotic scientist Dr Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), parents, children and dignitaries witness a close encounter of the comical kind connected to a meteorite, which impacted the site almost 5000 years ago.

Asteroid City will appeal to Anderson’s ardent fanbase but like his most recent indulgence, The French Dispatch, this is brightly coloured and freshly spun candy floss: mouth-watering to the eye, sweet on the tongue but insubstantial for an average cinemagoing appetite. The writer-director’s long-running collaboration with cinematographer Robert Yeoman conjures gorgeous vistas (Spanish locations double handsomely for Cold War America). Apart from Schwartzman and Johansson’s conflicted parents, characters skedaddle from our memory almost as quickly as an extra-terrestrial interloper.

Comedy

No Hard Feelings (15)

Review: Films are prone to infection at every stage of production: chronic logic failure, foot-in-mouth disease, hyperactive editing fever, sequelitis, special effects bloating, swollen soundtrack, tone deafness… the list goes on. Gene Stupnitsky’s potty-mouthed romp succumbs to overactive trailer syndrome: an increasingly common condition, particularly affecting comedies and action-packed blockbusters, which compels filmmakers to give away their killer one-liners and most jaw-dropping stunts in promotional material and hold almost nothing back as a surprise for paying audiences. No Hard Feelings has already shared its best set-ups and punchlines except for an all-guns-blazing sequence of full-frontal nudity that is a testament to Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence’s unerring commitment to her role as a cash-strapped 30-something, who promises to take a teenager’s virginity to ease her financial woes.

Co-written by Stupnitsky and John Phillips, this surprisingly sweet throwback to raunchy 1980s comedies like Weird Science and Risky Business is inspired by a real-life advert on Craigslist posted by a mother, who was looking for someone to date her son before he flew the nest and attended college. Lawrence and co-star Andrew Barth Feldman catalyse endearing on-screen chemistry as directionless souls across the age divide, who sow the seeds of a touching friendship in the most unusual circumstances. For all the titillation and sexually suggestive set-pieces including an amusingly awkward lap dance, No Hard Feelings is a big softie at heart.

Luckless Uber driver Maddie Barker (Lawrence) watches helplessly as old flame Gary (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) carries out a court order and tows away her car for failure to pay taxes on her late mother’s house. Priced out of the Long Island property market by obnoxious, wealthy outsiders, Maddie answers an advert posted by married couple Laird (Matthew Broderick) and Allison Becker (Laura Benanti). They are offering a Buick Regal to anyone willing to “date” their introverted 19-year-old son Percy (Barth Feldman) before he attends Princeton.

The shy teenager doesn’t appear to have any friends, he spends hours staring at his phone, only leaves his bedroom to volunteer at the local Rescue Friends animal shelter and lacks confidence to talk to girls. Maddie promises to bring Percy out of his shell but she is disarmed by his hopelessly romantic heart. “I’m not going to have sex with somebody I don’t know,” he quietly explains to Maddie, who knows that getting the boy into bed is the quickest route to a new car and earning the money she needs to save her home.

No Hard Feelings poses as a filthy-minded comedy but ultimately delivers something sweeter and more sincere, buoyed by the rapport between the lead actors. Supporting characters are undernourished but pacing is brisk and the script retains sympathy for Maddie, even when Long Island neighbours dismiss her as predatory, emotionally cold and manipulative.