Wonder Wheel

2017 Woody Allen movie

Rating: 12/20

Plot: It's 1950s Coney Island. Drama ensues with a family after an estranged daughter on the run from gangsters returns home, a son develops pyromaniacal tendencies, and the wife starts an affair with a younger lifeguard who looks a lot like Justin Timberlake.

This is the first Woody Allen movie I've seen on the big screen.

Kate Winslet and Jim Belushi do their best with weak material, and the period details are terrific. The film's got a great look with Vittorio Storaro's cinematography. Those gorgeous colors and often stunning uses of light are the main reason anybody should see this movie, especially on the big screen. I just wish the script and the story, the latter which only succeeds in being mildly intriguing, was even nearly as good as what Storaro does. The Wonder Wheel itself works as a metaphor with all its moving parts and the endless circles, and it sure is a pretty to see in the background of a lot of these shots.

As beautiful as it all looks, it's about as stagy as a movie can be. Eugene O'Neill is referenced in the dialogue, and it almost seems like Woody had written this as a play and shelved the thing but decided to turn it into a movie after he ran out of ideas in his early-80s. The actors are often Acting (with that capital-A), and even though there are some nice extended shots where the camera weaves around the characters in these settings as they interact, it does kind of feel like you've just drunkenly stumbled onto the stage during a production of an O'Neill performance or something. Winslet really does overcome the poor screenplay, and Belushi, though inconsistent, has some powerful moments. Timberlake is completely harmless, and Juno Temple is good in a more limited role. Timberlake's character does, for reasons that aren't clear to me, narrate this, apparently in an attempted playful way. It just seems kind of lazy and pointless.

My theory: Instead of making a movie every year, Woody Allen should spend a longer period of time developing something. I think Wonder Wheel could have been a great movie with that Storaro cinematography and that Winslet performance. Unfortunately, this just seems off and doesn't really add up to anything that I'm likely to remember a few years down the road or want to see again.

But I wouldn't mind seeing stills from it.