It’s a fun ride for fans to ‘Asteroid City’
It’s tough being a Wes Anderson fan. If you are one, you know exactly what we’re talking about. Loving the work of America’s most eccentric filmmaker means accepting the fact that there will always be a significant number of other people who can’t stand it, and that any effort to explain why you like his films to someone who doesn’t has almost as much potential for being divisive as a conversation about politics, though the stakes are admittedly much lower.
It also means putting up with the fact that his quirky directorial aesthetic, which has been parodied for decades now by TV shows like “The Simpsons” and “SNL” and become the inspiration for a massive explosion of AI-aided spoofs all over social media – is now enshrined in popular culture as an easy target for satire, almost certainly familiar to more people as the butt of a joke than as the stylish work of a meticulous auteur.
To be fair, though, the jokes are usually funny, and many of those send-ups were made by Anderson fans themselves, paying tribute to the uniquely fey cinematic style they love.
The director’s latest, “Asteroid City,” is bound to provide considerable fodder for both heated debate and high-concept snark; indeed, it is such a “Wes Anderson film” that it sometimes feels like it is making fun of itself – and whether that is a good thing or not may depend on how you feel generally about Wes Anderson films.
