Asteroid City

Those on iconoclast auteur Wes Anderson’s distinctly offbeat wavelength will find a trip to Asteroid City worth the journey, while neophytes might want to disembark along the way.

This visually dazzling period satire reaches deep into the filmmaker’s quirky bag of deadpan tricks while incorporating his usual subversive batch of amusing characters, sharp comedic dialogue, and top-notch ensemble cast — many of which are regulars in his troupe.

The breezy and clever result is an absurdist send-up of 1950s postwar paranoia coinciding with the rise of the space race that toggles fantasy and reality, with substance beneath its meticulous style.

The setting is a remote town in the Southwest noteworthy for being the erstwhile site of a major meteorite landing, where a group of Junior Stargazers have gathered for a convention. But after a bizarre alien encounter, the government imposes a strict and indefinite quarantine on the visitors.

Among those stranded is Augie (Jason Schwartzman), a recently widowed photographer struggling to start over when he befriends an actress (Scarlett Johansson) in an adjacent motel bungalow.

Then there’s the complicated relationship with his judgmental father-in-law (Tom Hanks), who had arrived to take Augie’s children home, along with his late daughter’s ashes.

We meet various others, too, including the opportunistic motel owner (Steve Carell), an esteemed astronomer (Tilda Swinton), a military general (Jeffrey Wright) who becomes a bureaucratic spokesman, plus an auto mechanic (Matt Dillon) and a schoolteacher (Maya Hawke) navigating the chaos.

As the situation endures and their connections to the outside world are cut off, their speculation prompts a collective existential crisis.

Despite a self-reflexive (and star-heavy) framing device that seems superfluous, the film maintains an efficient pace while managing to juggle a remarkable number of characters and overlapping storylines.

Some exemplary production design and cinematography render an imaginative and immersive sense of time and place, combining a washed-out color palette and animated backgrounds with playful camera movements and framing emphasizing the director’s penchant for artifice and symmetry.

Those less familiar with Anderson, especially his more recent projects, might find their tolerance for eccentricities and emotional detachment pushed to the limit. Maybe the screenplay’s high-brow verbosity will feel ostentatious and aggravatingly esoteric.

Yet for devotees, rather than becoming lost in the desert, Asteroid City evolves into a destination filled with heart and humanity alongside its goofy melancholic whimsy.

Rated PG-13, 104 minutes.