Review of Wilson (2017) by Matt C — 28 Mar 2017

With its bright yellow poster and poster that puts the attempted awkwardness of this movie front and center, Wilson seemed like it would be a movie that tried way too hard. Oddly enough, Wilson is a movie on the other side of that issue--it doesn't really try.

Woody Harrelson is always up for whatever role he's given, but this movie is too safe and meandering to have any sort of real point to it. Imagine if someone tried to make the most accessible Todd Solondz movie possible, sanding down the edges until the final product was a lopsided ball of a script with its direction simply telling it to roll wherever a brief shenanigan could occur.

Wilson (Harrelson) is a lonely, misanthropic, and brutally honest man who once had a wife Pippy (Laura Dern), but having been left by her years ago, he has come to resent the hopefulness and domesticity around him.

One day he tracks Pippy down and learns that they had a daughter who Pippy put up for adoption. Wilson drags Pippy to stalk their now-17-year-old daughter Claire (Isabella Amara), and he tries to forge a relationship with those around him.

There are some interesting aspects here that generally revolve around the idea of the central character, but they're done in such a safe manner that there's no edge to pierce the mind of the viewer.

It's based off of a graphic novel by the same name written by Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) and adapted by him, too, but pathos and observations are oddly absent. In fact, the entire endeavor seems to lack a true purpose, whether it is in regards to telling a concrete story or making jokes land aside from a few chuckles in the first half.

Structurally, the movie is a complete mess. There's no true direction or momentum to it. Maybe the graphic novel is great--I'm not familiar with it--but this iteration of the material doesn't have an identity.

If anything, it has an identity crisis. The direction from Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) subdued the anger of the titular character too much and insists on making several scenes stereotypically heartfelt, with an rising orchestral score in the background and the inner thoughts of those onscreen being too obviously conveyed.

The sentimentality doesn't seem welcome at any point. The movie definitely isn't good, but it thankfully isn't awful. Harrelson can inject life into any role, and he's playing a similar part to what he did in The Edge of Seventeen, although obviously not as well drawn or directed.

Some of the ways that Wilson acts are amusing as he comes off as an amalgamation of every annoying and inconsiderate guy that you run into on the bus, at a restaurant, or in the park. The tone that the movie seems to be aiming for comes about in the form of the character of Wilson's daughter, but she isn't in the movie enough.

It's nice to have Laura Dern in a movie, but she's wasted in the second half. Wilson is the type of movie that the main character would largely scoff off as a sham. It has some alluring moments that are grounded in reality, but it doesn't have the cohesion to carry such a meandering story across even 94 minutes.

It isn't developed enough and the actors generally pull the weight of the movie, but a few characters aren't equal to a movie. They could maybe make for a modestly entertaining web series, but not a feature film.

4.3/10, pretty bad, C-, definitely below average, etc.