Wonder Wheel
New Woody Allen Pic Proves Terribly Disappointing
I
suppose Woody Allen was due for a dud. After being distracted during
the Nineties by a bitter divorce and custody battle, the four-time
Oscar-winner had enjoyed quite a resurgence since the turn of the
century with a string of critically-acclaimed offerings that included
Small Time Crooks (2000), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001),
Match Point (2005), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in
Paris (2011) and Blue Jasmine (2013).
While
Wonder
Wheel might not be Woody's best film, it's certainly his worst of
this millennium. The film is set in the Fifties on Coney Island,
where the first thing you notice is that everybody's white, whether
on the beaches or in the amusement park.
Yes,
movies made back then were often lily-white productions which gave no
hint that African-Americans even existed. But it's a bit of a
head-scratcher to witness a director taking his cues from a
less-enlightened era, as if there's still a reason, today, to hide
the fact that there were plenty of black Coney Island patrons.
Besides
constantly asking myself "Where the black people at?" the
picture had this native New Yorker cringing at many of the
characters' inauthentic Brooklyn accents. The most distracting was
Jim Belushi's vaguely-familiar staccato. It took me half the movie to
figure out that he was imitating the classic Chicago accent
appropriately adopted by Dan Aykroyd to play opposite John Belushi in
The Blues Brothers (1980).
Equally-unconvincing,
if not as annoying, were the manners of speaking of co-stars Justin
Timberlake, Kate Winslet and Juno Temple. Bensonhurst-born Steve
Schirripa was the only lead actor to have the local cadence correct.
Perhaps Woody shoulda also let Steve serve as the cast's voice coach.
Besides
all of the above, the unengaging script left a lot to be desired. At
the point of departure, we learn that a middle-aged waitress
(Winslet) is cheating on her carousel operator husband (Belushi) with
a young lifeguard (Timberlake). The plot thickens when her
miserably-married stepdaughter (Temple) moves back home unexpectedly,
and proceeds to fall head-over-heels for her hunky lover, too.
Fuhgeddaboudit!
Rated PG-13 for sexuality, profanity, smoking and mature themes
Running time: 101 minutes
Production Studios: Amazon / Gravier Productions
Distributor: Amazon Studios
To see a trailer for Wonder Wheel, visit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFM0UqX9MJ8
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