A Tale of Two Sh*tties: Asteroid City vs. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

My son likes Wes Anderson movies, so we got Asteroid City, and looked at it. I can’t testify that we watched it, only that we looked at it. Watching something has a specific meaning.

Watch

intransitive verb

To look or observe attentively or carefully; be closely observant.
“watching for trail markers.”
To look and wait expectantly or in anticipation.
“watch for an opportunity.”
To act as a spectator; look on.
“stood by the road and watched.”

The thing being watched requires a certain amount of interest to merit watching, and Asteroid City was a solar system removed from that level of interest.

Of course ol’ Wes has always wanted his audience to look at his movies. He makes them bizarre and otherworldly for just that reason. He favors two-dimensional scenes, with exaggerated colors, anachronistic clothing and props, and weird, static poses for his actors. He’s the filmic equivalent of walking along a wall in Tutankhamen’s tomb, and wondering what everything means and why everyone has two left hands.

Believe me when I tell you that the trailer has a more coherent storyline than the movie.

But Wes didn’t always produce such directionless kitsch as Asteroid City. The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel had a more subdued version of the same sort of visual style, but they also had a story of some sort to knit it all together. It’s always a loopy and somewhat misanthropic story, but it gets you to watch. Asteroid City isn’t even a disconnected series of tableaus or vignettes. It literally starts noplace, goes nowhere, and ends in midair. I can’t give it a bad review, because it’s not coherent enough to merit one. It’s simply a self-indulgent mess.

Call me crazy, but my mind started to wander pretty far afield about ten minutes in to Asteroid City, and as it dragged along, it struck me that I’d seen this movie before, only not so sucky. An excuse to put a bunch of recognizable, but mostly second-string actors in a movie for no apparent reason, strictly so the audience can sort of collect them as the movie bumps along, like the baseball cards of a team in last place. I couldn’t stop thinking about It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World:

Mad World is from 1963, but it’s a 50s movie all the way. The cast was mostly 50s retreads, like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar, with some up and comers like Jonathan Winters and Dick Shawn sprinkled in. The director was Stanley Kramer, famous for ponderous dramas, but Mad World is anything but.

It’s funny, but Kramer captured the stark high desert vibe with oversaturated sunshine much better than Anderson did. And unlike Asteroid City, the movie was a genuine attempt to entertain the audience. There is nothing as funny as Jonathan Winters wrecking a gas station in Asteroid City, and there are ten things as funny as it elsewhere in IAMMMMW.

Like Asteroid City, IAMMMMW is a single joke told over and over more than a plot, with a sprawling cast and disconnected actions. Unlike Asteroid City, each scene is at least amusing, and the actors are all used to good effect. There are many uber-short cameos by people who just want to be included in the movie, very much like actors lining up to work for cheap money in a Wes Anderson flick. The difference is Stanley Kramer gave them all something to do, and knitted all their zany efforts into a bag at the end at the foot of the big W.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, actors, writers and producers rebelled against a studio system that they felt stifled their creativity, and put a brake on their off-camera behavior. IAMMMMW is a product of the studio system, the result of a committee of people who were honestly trying to make entertaining movies. The writers, Bill and Tania Rose, the directors, the studio, the actors, everybody was constrained by their roles, but worked as hard as they could in their orbit to make the best movie they possibly could. It was a trifle, but it was a stone cold groove. And it made plenty of money, too.

So the studio system is so dead and buried that it’s out of memory now. Wes Anderson doesn’t have to listen to anyone, and he doesn’t. He writes it and produces it and directs it, and if Asteroid City is any indication, he figures he’s the only person that needs to be entertained by it, too. He’s trying too hard to be Wes Anderson at this point.

Sometimes, trying too hard is the same as not trying at all.