Review: Wes Anderson's loopy, lyrical vision is alive and well in 'Asteroid City'

Wes Anderson is a film artist like no other. In defiance of realism, he builds dazzling, minimalist, all-star jewel boxes on screen that are easy to spoof but impossible to equal. That's why his most distinctive work, from "Rushmore" to "The Grand Budapest Hotel," endures.

Anderson's loopy, lyrical vision is alive and well in "Asteroid City," now in theaters where it will draw the usual polarizing responses. But no one interested in the power of cinema will dream of missing it. There's much fun to be had, along with an Anderson plunge into enveloping sorrow.

Set in 1955 in the fictional southwestern desert town of Asteroid City, pop. 87, the movie gathers teen stargazers -- and their parents -- at a convention that awards science scholarships. Atomic testing booms nearby, where a 100-foot meteor crater sparks concern about the government's space program. And just wait till an alien shows up and everyone is quarantined.

Jason Schwartzman, in the film's best and most plot-centering performance, plays Augie Steenbeck, a widowed war photographer who's brought his son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) to compete. Woodrow would rather gaze on Dinah (Grace Edwards), a 15-year-old botany brainiac.

It turns out Augie has his eye on Grace's mother, Midge Campbell (a dynamite Scarlett Johansson), a Marilyn Monroe-ish movie star known for her art-imitates-life roles as abused alcoholics. Johansson digs deep into the death-wishing Midge in all her tragic and comic implications. And she and Schwartzman forge a connection that feels real.

There's also Tom Hanks, joining the Anderson stock company as Stanley Zak, Augie's grumpy, pistol-packing father-in-law who is irritated to no end that Augie has yet to tell his four children that their mother has died because, well, "the time is never right."

Let's hit pause since you should know that Anderson frames "Asteroid City" as a fictional movie within a fictional TV play. Shot in black-and-white, as TV shows were in the 1950s, the television piece is narrated by a host (Bryan Cranston) who tells us we're watching a double fabrication devised by Tennessee Williams-ish playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).

It's here that Schwartzman takes the role of Jones Hall, an actor who worries that he might be playing Augie all wrong as he expresses his doubts to an actress (Margot Robbie) whose scene as Augie's wife were shot and then cut from the finished TV play.

Got that? Probably not. All the doubling can be confusing, especially when Anderson sends out a parade of supporting characters played by the likes of Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Matt Dillon, Jeffrey Wright, Maya Hawke, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis and Jarvis Cocker.

"Strange aren't they, children," asks a delightful, deadpan Steve Carrell as the city's beleaguered motel manager. Anderson, recalling his 2012 young-love landmark "Moonrise Kingdom," thinks children are wonderful. And you will, too, as the film casts its quirky, meandering spell.

"Asteroid City" has been called a grief comedy to get at the sense of loss that invades Anderson's brightly colored fable. Here it's a fear of the unknown that rises up as the characters look to the skies and wonder what scary stuff is out there and inside themselves.

Is there any way to exert control over the chaos of living? Anderson, with his play within a movie, thinks the healing power of art and human connection might help get us there. But he never discounts the struggle. It may take a closer look for "Asteroid City" to fully resonate in your head and heart. But when it does, you're in for something funny, touching and vital.