Wonder Wheel ** / *****
Directed by: Woody Allen.
Written by: Woody Allen.
Starring: Kate Winslet (Ginny), Justin Timberlake (Mickey), Jim Belushi (Humpty), Juno Temple (Carolina), Jack Gore (Richie), David Krumholtz (Jake).
For the most part, I have been on the side of “separate the art from the artist” whenever things come up – about Roman Polanski, Nate Parker, or of course, Woody Allen. The #MeToo movement that has sprung up recently is a great thing, and I do believe we are all better off with men who abuse their power exposed to the world. Yet, I’m still basically saying the same thing – separate the art from the artist, because once you go down that road, where do you draw the line? In the case of Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel, I really do wish I could do that – separate the man Allen is, from the film he made – but I really, really can’t this time. Allen has made a film about a washed up actress (Kate Winslet), well on her way to destroying her second marriage because of her infidelity, who when she finds out her current lover would rather have her step daughter than herself, does something horrible to exact her revenge. Somehow, by the end of this thing, the dude who wants to leave Winslet for her stepdaughter has the moral high ground! I mean, Allen has to be trolling us here, right?
But I digress. Even if you are able to separate Allen from his work this time around, the sad truth is that Wonder Wheel is another of those late Allen films that feels half baked. There are some nice moments delivered by Winslet – especially in the final act, when she really goes off the deep end, and the cinematography by Vittorio Storaro (who also made Allen’s last film, Café Society, look spectacular) really is wonderful. The dialogue doesn’t even have as many tin eared clunkers as recent Allen films, and the story is relatively streamlined – cutting out a lot of the distracting subplots recent Allen films have had. As the Allen surrogate, Justin Timberlake has a charm all his own – he isn’t trying to “do” an Allen impersonation – which is mainly a good thing (it worked wonders for Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris).
And yet, the movie really just kind of sits there for an hour, waiting for the fireworks of the last act. As Ginny, the overworked waitress/mother/wife to Humpty (Jim Belushi), Winslet really is quite good. The role isn’t that far off from Cate Blanchett’s in Blue Jasmine – and Winslet shows enough here to make you wish her role was half as good as Blanchett’s was. As Humpty, Belushi really is quite bad – no matter how dark the movie gets, he seems to be playing everything for laughs – like he’s part of a 1950s sitcom or something. I did like that Timberlake doesn’t try to do an Allen impression, but he doesn’t have all that much to do at times here, and his motivations shift from scene to scene for no reason. Juno Temple is a delight as Carolina, the stepdaughter, although a little bit more depth would have helped – so she hasn’t just playing the sweet ingénue.
Allen making a disappointing film is nothing new. He’s been hit or miss since the late 1990s, even as he maintains his one a year pace. But Allen making a film that Wonder Wheel somehow feels more disappointing than he has in the past. Part of it, yes, is that you sit there and cannot believe that Allen has essentially made a film about how he’s the wronged party. But it’s also because he wastes so much good stuff here – Winslet, Storaro in particular – which is used to make nothing more than this testament to his own self-delusion.
