"Oh, spare me the bad melodrama." Kate Winslet's character lights a cigarette, striking a pose against the neon like a skirted Revlon doll. Justin Timberlake's Coney Island lifeguard and self-described romantic stands mortified. As does the audience but not for the reasons director/writer Woody Allen might have hoped for when he first penned his newest film Wonder Wheel. For by the time Kate Winslet barks that nakedly obvious line, I half wanted to shout back "ditto". I didn't, for the sake of the other two people in the theater watching this overcooked trainwreck but something tells me they were thinking the same thing too.
Wonder Wheel sucks. It is, in this writer's opinion the first abject failure in Woody Allen's impressive 48 year repertoire. Not just a disappointment, not just a simple misfire, not just a below-average comedy that tries and fails to garner a constant stream of laughs, a la Anything Else (2003) or Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001). No this thing is a certified stinker. An arch, cloying, overwrought, and callous melodrama that took the worst instincts of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams and blunted them until every aspect of the script resembled a high school dramatist's idea of truth and consequence.
Thing is I've been a longtime Woody Allen apologist (only in respect to his work as a filmmaker just to make that clear). I've admired his work since a teen. I admit his late period work isn't as transformative as his early comedies and mid-period dramedies, yet I always claimed up until this point that Allen has never made a terrible film. Now it is seems I must eat crow.
Wonder Wheel is a kitchen sink drama concerning a middle-aged carousel operator named Humpty (Belushi) and his despondent second wife Ginny (Winslet). Their life of mundane anonymity is made topsy-turvy with the unexpected arrival of Carolina (Temple), Humpty's daughter from his first marriage. Formerly a gangster's wife, Carolina now finds herself penniless and on the run after turning informant. Meanwhile, Mickey (Timberlake) and attractive young lifeguard finds himself orbiting around Ginny and Carolina; becoming an inadvertent catalyst to brewing resentments and jealousies.
Much of what you'd expect from a Woody Allen joint is written into the margins. Timberlake fills in as the neurotic, well-read writer/bulls**t artist balancing two women, Winslet swings for the cheap seats as the woman scorned and Belushi tips the scales as a blue collar palooka that chafes harshly against the stories loftier ambitions. Yet everything about Wonder Wheel feels just the slightest bit off. The characters, what they feel, what they go through and what they say is stilted and artificial - echoes of other better stories told with more conviction. Since there's no real tension from the film's crime element, we basically see these broadly drawn caricatures ramble, spew and sit; nary a plot point around to offer up conclusions.
With nothing really to grab onto, no unifying themes or layered characterizations, everyone involved is more or less on their own up on the screen. In order of success: cinematographer Vittorio Storaro does a wondrous job painting this dinky little stage play with the right amount of light and color. His use of natural overcast, soft tones and neon combined with optimal digital photography served as the only tool with which most emotion was amplified. Kate Winslet also manages to more or less walk away from this mess unscathed thanks to the power of one hell of an Ethel Merman impression. Finally, while some may find Juno Temple to be far too dollish and innocent as the world-traveled gangster's wife, it is fair to assume she does her best based on what is written.
But of course for every carefully set frame there's a Jim Belushi or a Justin Timberlake lumbering about, mucking up the machinery. Belushi's character especially seems especially thin, sounding at times like a dude playing Boatswain at Summer Stock and somehow managing to bungle his lines. Timberlake on the other hand simply exudes smugness. Every time he waxes poetically about Hamlet and fanes passively about his apartment in Greenwich Village he sounds like a college aged Jordan Belfort who just discovered the cliffnotes version of "The Iceman Cometh".
Wonder Wheel is the equivalent of having old furniture being bequeathed to you by long-gone grandparents. Sure it looks nice but everything about it is outmoded, creaky and reeking of mothballs. It's blunt, obvious, boring, and melodramatic and lacking nearly all the wit we've come to expect from such an affair. This one is a hard one to say no to, it really is, but believe me when I tell you Wonder Wheel is worst case scenario Woody Allen (artistically speaking).
Wonder Wheel sucks. It is, in this writer's opinion the first abject failure in Woody Allen's impressive 48 year repertoire. Not just a disappointment, not just a simple misfire, not just a below-average comedy that tries and fails to garner a constant stream of laughs, a la Anything Else (2003) or Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001). No this thing is a certified stinker. An arch, cloying, overwrought, and callous melodrama that took the worst instincts of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams and blunted them until every aspect of the script resembled a high school dramatist's idea of truth and consequence.
Thing is I've been a longtime Woody Allen apologist (only in respect to his work as a filmmaker just to make that clear). I've admired his work since a teen. I admit his late period work isn't as transformative as his early comedies and mid-period dramedies, yet I always claimed up until this point that Allen has never made a terrible film. Now it is seems I must eat crow.
Wonder Wheel is a kitchen sink drama concerning a middle-aged carousel operator named Humpty (Belushi) and his despondent second wife Ginny (Winslet). Their life of mundane anonymity is made topsy-turvy with the unexpected arrival of Carolina (Temple), Humpty's daughter from his first marriage. Formerly a gangster's wife, Carolina now finds herself penniless and on the run after turning informant. Meanwhile, Mickey (Timberlake) and attractive young lifeguard finds himself orbiting around Ginny and Carolina; becoming an inadvertent catalyst to brewing resentments and jealousies.
Much of what you'd expect from a Woody Allen joint is written into the margins. Timberlake fills in as the neurotic, well-read writer/bulls**t artist balancing two women, Winslet swings for the cheap seats as the woman scorned and Belushi tips the scales as a blue collar palooka that chafes harshly against the stories loftier ambitions. Yet everything about Wonder Wheel feels just the slightest bit off. The characters, what they feel, what they go through and what they say is stilted and artificial - echoes of other better stories told with more conviction. Since there's no real tension from the film's crime element, we basically see these broadly drawn caricatures ramble, spew and sit; nary a plot point around to offer up conclusions.
With nothing really to grab onto, no unifying themes or layered characterizations, everyone involved is more or less on their own up on the screen. In order of success: cinematographer Vittorio Storaro does a wondrous job painting this dinky little stage play with the right amount of light and color. His use of natural overcast, soft tones and neon combined with optimal digital photography served as the only tool with which most emotion was amplified. Kate Winslet also manages to more or less walk away from this mess unscathed thanks to the power of one hell of an Ethel Merman impression. Finally, while some may find Juno Temple to be far too dollish and innocent as the world-traveled gangster's wife, it is fair to assume she does her best based on what is written.
But of course for every carefully set frame there's a Jim Belushi or a Justin Timberlake lumbering about, mucking up the machinery. Belushi's character especially seems especially thin, sounding at times like a dude playing Boatswain at Summer Stock and somehow managing to bungle his lines. Timberlake on the other hand simply exudes smugness. Every time he waxes poetically about Hamlet and fanes passively about his apartment in Greenwich Village he sounds like a college aged Jordan Belfort who just discovered the cliffnotes version of "The Iceman Cometh".
Wonder Wheel is the equivalent of having old furniture being bequeathed to you by long-gone grandparents. Sure it looks nice but everything about it is outmoded, creaky and reeking of mothballs. It's blunt, obvious, boring, and melodramatic and lacking nearly all the wit we've come to expect from such an affair. This one is a hard one to say no to, it really is, but believe me when I tell you Wonder Wheel is worst case scenario Woody Allen (artistically speaking).