Post by StevePulaski on Dec 4, 2017 12:15:56 GMT -5
Wonder Wheel (2017)
Directed by: Woody Allen
Directed by: Woody Allen
Justin Timberlake, Kate Winslet, and Juno Temple.
Rating: ★★½
NOTE: Part of "Woody Allen Mondays," an ongoing movie-watching event.
Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel will likely be remembered more for its quietly impacting visual effects than for what comprises its narrative. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Dick Tracy, Last Tango in Paris) uses digital effects in the uncommon, natural way that involves bringing bygone locations back to life rather than letting the fantastical side of one's imagination run wild. With Allen's latest film — his 48th to be precise — Storaro crafts a 1950s Coney Island partly comprised of practical effects, shot-on-location B-roll, and digital trickery, all interwoven with one another so naturally you wish the location served as more than a simple backdrop.
A good portion of the film is spent in the ramshackle home of the main characters, Ginny (Kate Winslet) and her second husband Humpty (Jim Belushi). Their home rests near the Boardwalk, close enough that they can see the festivities of Coney as well as the famous titular Ferris Wheel that watches over everyone and everything. It's a dingy, dilapidated cavern that serves as a mostly transitory location for the family as Ginny, a local waitress, and her life begin to unravel when she starts seeing Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a lifeguard significantly younger in age than her, and tries to keep her husband's twentysomething daughter Carolina (Juno Temple) out of trouble. Carolina is back residing with her parents after a fallout with her gangster husband, rendering the aforementioned abode to be a place where hostile energy overtakes any kind of civil discourse that might otherwise unfold if the characters in the film maintained something resembling stability.
Even Ginny's young son Richie (Jack Gore) from her first marriage has his own quirks. His desire to start fires wherever he goes as well as take money from his on-the-wagon father to go to the movies render Ginny hopeless as meetings with the psychiatrist leave a lot to be desired. Things get especially stressful for her when her relationship with Mickey intensifies to the point that she considers leaving Humpty, at least until Mickey starts wooing Carolina with his knowledge of poetry in a similar fashion to how he initially captured her attention.
Despite the screwball potential of this premise, Wonder Wheel has more in common with the more tragic works of Allen (September, Match Point). Scenes inside Ginny's home particularly take on some darker elements, as even the lighting dims to convey the somber circumstances. Even when he's sober, Humpty carries an unpredictable level of anger with him that is as obvious as his trademark blue-collar Italian garb in the form of a work shirt half-heartedly cloaking a wife-beater. His instability partly fuels Ginny's instability and her desire to cheat with a younger, more romantic soul who reminds her of her golden years as an actress when people called her "Virginia DeLorean."
The cast assembled reminds of those questionable yet intriguing ensembles Allen used to craft in the 2000's that featured everyone from Jason Biggs to Will Ferrell to Dan Akroyd (unfortunately not in the same film). Their individual strengths surface when they are placed in a set together and forced to banter with each other, which often leads to tempers flaring. Winslet and Belushi use their respective characters to create a believably tumultuous situation of domestic abuse that's only troubling when you consider how Allen undermines its severity.
But when Belushi is on-screen, the film comes alive in a different way than when Winslet and Temple are front-and-center, and this is really to no fault of their own. Wonder Wheel is in the lower threshold of Allen's films when it comes to its writing, as he doesn't fill the premise with dramatic urgency so much as a lot of characters and subplots. In some of his films, he can get away with that, for there is a stronger idea at hand or the move is made to have the film operate more like real-life, but with Wonder Wheel, it feels like Winslet is trying to make this her Blue Jasmine, so to speak, but Allen doesn't give her the cohesion necessary for this film or her performance to hit as hard as it could.
Furthermore, Justin Timberlake's presence in the film never becomes the least bit natural; time away from acting hasn't helped his own abilities whatsoever. It's a role that perhaps could've been better handled by Dave Franco or Drake Bell, for Timberlake and his inconsistent monologuing feel like they're plucked from a different film about 1950s Coney Island. Even under the defense of him existing on an entirely different wavelength to show the two dichotomous lives of Ginny, his performance doesn't transcend the oddness it inspires.
Through all of this muddied inconsistency intermixed with visual beauty, some inklings of distinction in direction rise to the surface. For one, there is an audacity that comes with going through the trouble of working with production designers and cinematographers to craft a lifelike, period-specific Coney Island to make a film about domestic turmoil that I deeply admire. With that, Allen's allusions that Carolina will end up like Ginny later in her life are troubling enough that you wish that he'd capitalized on them in a more succinct and, dare I say, obvious manner. Ginny's motivations are also ones that should prompt an intriguing, if conflicting, discussion, but the film suffers by comparison given Allen's forte of films where woman-has-a-mental-breakdown was a base tagged so well and so recently in Blue Jasmine that Wonder Wheel feels like a similar story with added eye-candy.
As with most movies made by the now 81-year-old director, Wonder Wheel has its memorable elements, even if they all feel another rewrite and some concentration away from meshing together and making a good film. As a result, the film spins its gears in a questionable fashion, and while it doesn't become so redundant that you notice its interworkings, it doesn't leave much to the imagination that isn't already inspired due to an average Allen screenplay.
NOTE: My review of Wonder Wheel on my radio-show "Sleepless with Steve" on WONC 89.1FM:
Starring: Kate Winslet, Jim Belushi, Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, and Jack Gore. Directed by: Woody Allen.