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We got a new comedy from Jennifer Lawrence and from Wes Anderson, and I look at them both in this week’s roundup. If you’d like to see more of my scores for films and thoughts, feel free to follow me on Letterboxd.

Asteroid City (Theaters)
Starring: Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Steve Carrell, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, and Jake Ryan
Synopsis: By this point, you should know what it means when a film comes from Wes Anderson. Though the stories vary, the style is uniquely his, and it pervades all of his efforts. That’s true of his latest, Asteroid City, which opened in wide release Friday. The film is set in a small dessert town, the site of a crater where a meteor hit long ago. The Junior Stargazers and their families are gathered for a rare event and celebration, honoring their achievements in science. Naturally, things go awry. There’s also the film within the film, plenty of quirk and a lot of heart. This is a wonderfully crafted film. The look is beautiful and draws you in. The performances are strong, and the dialogue has a good pace. My one quibble here is that the film employs a plot device that you don’t pick up on in trailers and I won’t spoil here. It wasn’t what I was expecting and I’m not sure it totally worked for me. Despite that, this is one of the sharper entries from Anderson. It doesn’t match the heights of my favorite of his films, but it’s a solid story and production, one that delivers laughs and an engaging world. It’s in my Top 10 for the year so far and likely one that will remain a player in the comedy category through the end of the year.
Rating: Rated PG-13 on appeal for brief graphic nudity, smoking and some suggestive material.
Verdict: Three and a half stars out of five

No Hard Feelings (Theaters)
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Matthew Broderick, Laura Benanti, Natalie Morales, and Scott MacArthur
Synopsis: Lawrence is a star, but we haven’t seen her take leading roles much the past few years as she focused on family. Now she’s back in something of a broad summer comedy. Here, she plays a 32-year-old woman living in Montauk, New York. She’s a local in a town that’s a summer haven for the New York elite. Maddie (Lawrence) is trying to scratch out a living and make enough money to save her mother’s house after she’s hit with a large tax bill. That becomes harder when she loses her car. Looking for another, she finds an offer. A wealthy couple (Benanti and Broderick) are offering a car if someone with “date” their 19-year-old son, bringing him out of his shell before he heads off to Princeton. Maddie takes the job, but Percy (Feldman) proves to be a bigger challenge than she expected. The set up here is pretty simple. This is an R-rated comedy that earns its rating. There are some wild sequences and some quirky sequences, all of it meant to entertain and Percy and Maddie learn from each other to move forward in their lives. That sounds great, but unfortunately this movie doesn’t pop, it fizzles. The script from director Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips is uneven. The chemistry between Maddie and Percy doesn’t work, which makes the Third Act a struggle. And worse yet, the laughs are hardly consistent. In the end it feels like something of a bland story, one whose elements we’ve seen before and done better. Lawrence is a talented performer, but this film doesn’t seem to make the most of that. It’s a flat summer comedy that is hardly the kind of film you need to make an effort to see in theaters.
Rating: Rated R for sexual content, language, some graphic nudity and brief drug use.
Verdict: Two stars out of five

World’s Best (Disney+)
Starring: Manny Magnus, Punam Patel, and Utkarsh Ambudkar
Synopsis: In the latest from Disney+, Prem (Magnus) is a talented musician who has the heart of an artist. While he’s trying to succeed in the former, he learns his passion for the latter comes from his deceased father (Ambudkar). He undergoes a journey, looking for a way to fuse his love of math and his love of rap into something special that honors the gifts he’s gotten from both of his parents. It’s also a journey to learn more and forge a connection to a parent he lost years earlier. This is a fun film that has some heart and an upbeat message. Magnus is fun in the lead role and Ambudkar, best known from his work on the series Ghosts, makes for a fun partner-in-crime. There are some fun songs and sequences and a few laughs. This is a nice slice of family entertainment, albeit a film that doesn’t go too deep. This is a light little summer tale that will work for the whole family.
Rating: Rated PG for thematic elements and some language.
Verdict: Two and a half stars out of five