Wonder Wheel

As the somewhat unreliable narrator -- he informs us early on that he has a tendency to indulge melodrama -- of the latest issue of Woody Allen, Justin Timberlake breaks the fourth wall to speak to us, in a way that seems somehow old-fashioned, more like the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town than characters in more modern productions such as Adam McKay's The Big Short or the (fantastic, coming soon) I, Tonya.

Maybe that has something to do with the general mannered-ness of the production, which, more than any other Allen film I can think of, feels like a filmed play -- even in its best moments when the lighting and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro conspire to deliver visuals that evoke Wong Kar-wai and Christopher Doyle's neon painterliness.

But maybe it's not the worst thing when a Woody Allen movie surprises you with its color palette. What's a shame about Wonder Wheel is that so little else of it is surprising, from the cringeworthy speech Timberlake (as Mickey, a lifeguard/aspiring playwright, patrolling a section of Coney Island beach at some vague moment in "the '50s") delivers about the irresistible "hieroglyphics of the heart" (echoing Allen's oft-quoted dictum that "the heart wants what it wants") to the setting itself, which refers back to Alvy Singer's boyhood beneath the Cyclone, the Brooklyn amusement park's famous roller coaster, in Annie Hall.

One can wonder how long the story has been laying around Allen's apartment -- it just feels like a project that has been sitting inert for years. The story feels so familiar I half-believe I heard it years ago. Yet it still has a curious first-draft feel about it, as though Allen simply trusted his cast to animate the words on the page.

And, for the most part, they do OK -- and Kate Winslet, as fading beauty Ginny, who once aspired to be an actress but ended up marrying neanderthal Humpty (Jim Belushi who, bless his heart, tries very hard in a thankless role that might have been interesting in the hands of a Jackie Gleason or Ernest Borgnine), has a few moments of genuine power, when she manages to break through the soapish melodrama (perhaps we are supposed to imagine it's Mickey's and not Allen's story) and let us see her character's desperation and capacity for evil. (No one will ever accuse Allen of being soft on the women folk.)

Mean Humpty has a daughter by a previous marriage, Caroline (Juno Temple), who married into the mob but couldn't handle the pressure. So, for reasons that the script belabors, she has returned to Coney Island and her estranged father because that's the last place the wise guys would come looking for her. Well, alright.

Oh, and Ginny is mother to a 10-year-old pyromaniac, a troubled kid who seems to exist to tick away like a time bomb while the others fret and strut.

Anyway, Ginny begins an affair with Mickey, who eventually decides he'd prefer to be with Caroline. Yes, Woody Allen goes there, as we knew he would.

All that said, Wonder Wheel is not a disaster. It's not top-flight Allen, but it's better than a lot of critics have given it credit for being. But it doesn't quite feel like a movie either -- it feels like a poorly cast play (neither Timberlake nor Belushi have any business trying to hang with Winslet or Temple; they simply get blown off the screen) with every character forced to mouth some lines that would have been improved if anyone had bothered to take a second pass at the script.

Yet it is lovely to look at, and Winslet wills her Ginny into life. Absent the baggage of the director's personal life, Wonder Wheel might be viewed as a beautiful and curious movie, perhaps even a promising one. But as it is, it's just this year's model.

MovieStyle on 01/05/2018