Wes Anderson's stylized, star-stuffed comedy 'Asteroid City' big on both spectacle and dramatic inertia

“Asteroid City” - ★ ★ ½

“Asteroid City”? A fun, nostalgically retro place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there for a full 104 minutes.

By now, the dazzling visual signature of genuine auteur Wes Anderson has become so pronounced that even if fans didn't know who directed “Asteroid City,” they could tell after watching the first 20 seconds.

With its shapeshifting aspect ratios, eye-popping production designs, stylized acting by an all-star cast, droll comic tone, lateral camera movements and stagey screen compositions, “Asteroid City” appears to be vintage Wes.

But would it be cinematic sacrilege to suggest “Asteroid City” might work better as a film short rather than a full feature? Clearly Anderson is more interested in world-building than in building a reinforced dramatic structure necessary to support a feature-length film. A short solves that problem by engaging us with Anderson's visual wit and fascination with the storytelling process, while avoiding the dramatic inertia that eventually sets in.

Not since Dorothy Gale first entered Munchkin Land has a camera spent so much time luxuriating over the details of an otherworldly location.

We drop into a desert town called Asteroid City (population 87) with its turquoise-saturated, 1950s small town setting reeking with artifice, single pump gas station, and a huge meteorite crater that serves as the local tourist attraction. A police car exchanges gunfire with a getaway car speeding through town. Just because.

And occasionally, a nuclear explosion throws a scary mushroom cloud into the distant sky.

This is where a family car breaks down, forcing war photographer and widower dad Augie Steenbeck (a bearded Jason Schwartzman), his four kids and the ashes of his late wife in a Tupperware bowl to stick around for a while.

In quick order, Augie's grumpy father-in-law Stanley Zak (Tom Hanks) arrives to help, full of criticism against Augie, and packing a revolver in his waistband. Just because.

Meanwhile, Asteroid City serves as the meeting place for a prestigious Junior Stargazers convention, where high-IQ kids will be honored for their nutty scientific inventions inside the meteorite crater by none other than Tilda Swinton as a techno-babbling astronomer armed with a scholarship to award a teen space cadet.

When superstar actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson with orange lipstick) drops into town, intense romance blossoms with her and Augie, artistically framed through neighboring windows at the Motor Court Motel.

Later, Augie's supersmart son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) and Midge's daughter Dinah (Grace Edwards) also get wounded by Cupid's arrows.

What passes for a plot device occurs when an alien spacecraft buzzes Asteroid City, forcing the U.S. Army to move in and quarantine the community, including Matt Dillon's local car mechanic, Jeffrey Wright's hard-bitten army general, Steve Carell's unmemorable motel manager, and Stargazer parents played by Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber and Stephen Park.

Then we have Anderson's most ambitious gimmick, a framing device for the entire movie that consists of a live, black-and-white 1950s behind-the-scenes TV telecast hosted by a nameless talent (Bryan Cranston) presenting a play called “Asteroid City,” written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), directed by Schubert Green (Adrien Brody) with a cast selected by Saltzburg Keitel (Willem Dafoe). The initial provocative nuttiness of his extra narrative layer - examining the creative teamwork required to produce a stage play - slowly devolves into annoyance near the end.

If “Asteroid City” intended to show how human emotions and connections can thrive and protect us even during sadness, loss and lockdowns in lonesome desert communities under threat of alien invasion, the emotions don't quite connect between the characters, or us.

“Asteroid City” earns a 10 for spectacle; 4 for dramatic payoff. But at least it includes a positive shout-out to student newspaper journalists, who defy a government gag order by publishing a scoop about the town's close encounter of the third kind.

The alien, appearing in a black outfit with buggy eyes, is played by none other than Jeff Goldblum. But he's totally unrecognizable.

Just because.

Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody

Other: A Focus Features release. Rated PG-13 for nudity, smoking, suggestive material. 104 minutes