Metacritic reviews

If all of Anderson’s movies are sustained by the tension between order and chaos, uncertainty and doubt, “Asteroid City” is the first that takes that tension as its subject, often expressing it through the friction created by rubbing together its various levels of non-reality.

In its own offbeat way, Asteroid City is an Anderson patchwork of Cold War paranoia and American family values in all their often hypocritical glory. It is every bit as arch as his best work, while still managing to tug hard on the heartstrings.

The audacity and beauty of Asteroid City lie in the way it connects the mysteries of the human heart to the secrets of science and the universe.

Truly delightful. Wes Anderson leans into his trademark eccentricities for a trip to the desert that won’t win any converts but will keep the Anderson faithful content.

Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola have great fun with the idea, channeling 1950s B-movie vibes. Like all of Anderson’s work, it’s very affectionate, even if every camera move appears to have been calculated with the precision of a mathematical equation.

Anderson visits fresh frontiers with a close encounter of the quirky kind, holding wit, whimsy and sly wisdom in supple balance.

The movie rattles cleverly and exhilaratingly along, adroitly absorbing the implications of pathos and loneliness without allowing itself to slow down. It is tempting to consider this savant blankness as some kind of symptom, but I really don’t think so: it is the expression of style. And what style it is.

Delightful, occasionally quite moving and always exquisitely crafted, this is a modest charmer about trying to make sense of the world either through art or other pursuits.

The minor problem of it all is while what Anderson is trying to say can be read across the sky like a beautifully glistening moonbeam; it does often lack the craterous depth of feeling we know he’s capable of when doing his best creative and emotional astrography.

Asteroid City looks smashing, but as a movie it’s for Anderson die-hards only, and maybe not even too many of them.