What am I missing from Asteroid City?

Saw Asteroid City in a nice theater recently. It seems to have been a pretty divisive film amongst my friends and online as well. I felt like I was watching a giant rube goldberg contraption, like a miniature train set, and that little vignettes would happen as you watched the train go around the track. Something like a big cuckoo clock. But it didn't seem to have much else besides that. The play seemed like an unnecessary stretch as well.

I love Wes Anderson, I love watching difficult films (as well as genre films), but I like to be emotionally engaged to the characters. This film seemed as if there was no honest emotion in the characters, they just had lines to say. Was that because I was "watching the play"? If so, I did not enjoy that experience.

Help me understand the greater meaning of this film. Did I miss something? Or do people really just like cute scenes with quirky art direction and that's it?

The whole thing felt like it could have been an American Express commercial tbh.

Submitted July 15, 2023 at 03:49AM by UmbraPenumbra https://ift.tt/Gu7IN59