Review of Wonder Wheel (2017) by Alan W — 15 Feb 2018

Whether it is out of boredom or being a Woody Allen die-hard completist, I bite the bullet and stomp up the Euros for his latest film and... wish I hadn't. Once again, Allen regurgitates and revisits stories and themes he has explored in better films before as Wonder Wheel reminds me of Radio Days, Crimes & Misdemeanors and Hannah & Her Sisters; but while he was able to make a few of his recent 're-hashes' interesting if not at least watchable, this underwritten and unengaging mess is about as appealing as week old leftovers.

Set in Coney Island in the 1950s, the story of unhappy couple, Ginny and Humpty, the former is having an extramarital affair with lifeguard Mickey and the latter is hiding his daughter from a former marriage from the mobster she married very young, feels like a high schooler imitating Tennesse Williams and it is as clumsy as it is predictable.

The characters bumble from one scene to the next in convoluted plotting that it lazily dismisses as fate. I'm not sure if a different cast could have sold it better; but here we have an OTT Jim Belushi and a bland/miscast Justin Timberlake and the result is deadly dull.

And who knows if Kate Winslet is doing a bad Blanche Dubois impersonation or just taking the Mickey here (literally) and took the job only to snog Timberlake in multiple scenes. Desperate to find anything redeemable here, the cinematography and production occasionally make the film looks pretty as a seaside postcard, but other times, it just looks cheap and very stagey, leaving us to wonder how a once brilliant filmmaker, known for his verbal dexterity and immensely quotable and amusing dialogue, can lost his magical touch so abominably and ends up with this misconceived turkey.