Wonderfully weird “Asteroid City” starts streaming

There are two good ways to watch a Wes Anderson movie. You could:
1) Just let it wash over you. Don’t worry about details and distractions, such as … well, a plot. That’s especially helpful for “Asteroid City” (shown here), the odd gem that reaches Peacock on Friday (Aug. 11).
2) OK, I lied about that. It turns out there’s only one way.
Plot people – and I know some personally – are frustrated by Anderson. For the rest of us, this is a treat.
He had already done wonderful things, especially in “Moonrise Kingdom” (2012) and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2014), with their quirky visuals and odd characters. This time, the script – which he wrote with Roman Coppola (Francis’ son) – is even more free-form.
We’re mostly seeing a story about some brainy kids, gathered at science convention in the desert. Except this is really a documentary about a play about the gathering. There’s a narrator (Bryan Cranston), who accidentally wanders into the play itself. We meet the playwright and director; we even meet an actress (Margot Robbie) whose scene was cut from the play; she helpfully recites it for us.
If you start worrying about the levels of reality, your head might explode. Just focus on that main story.
This is the perfect site for a science convention – a Roswell-type town that once had a giant asteroid-landing. There’s a 1950s look to its motel, reflecting an era when outer space seemed magical.
The kids arrive with perplexed parents, played by Liev Schreiver, Hope Davis, Stephen Park and, especially, Scarlett Johnansson (shown here) and Jason Schwartzman, as two world-weary strangers.
Johansson plays an actress. Schwartzman – who is Roman Coppola’s cousin and Anderson’s perpetual star – plays a guy whose father-in-law (Tom Hanks, appearing briefly) dislikes him, partly because he hasn’t yet told the kids that their mother died.
Things only spiral from there. The arrival of an alien is probably only the second weirdest thing here; the continued presence of an old-time country-music band topped that.
I can’t defend any of this … although, frankly, I never object to any addition (no matter how aribitrary) of aliens, country music or Margot Robbie. But by that time, I was already into my let-it-wash-over-me phase. I’d recommend that you do the same.