By now, keeping track of Woody Allenâs cinematic blunders is futile. No one cranks âem out like the 81-year-old workhorse, who has, for more than half a century, made a movie almost every year. With each recent success â âMatch Point,â âMidnight in Paris,â âBlue Jasmineâ â he unleashes approximately four misfires. Even the worst of them contain the hallmarks of a gifted, idiosyncratic storyteller, but imagine what Allenâs rĂ©sumĂ© would look like if he only executed his first-rate ideas.
Allenâs latest fizzle, the 1950s-set âWonder Wheel,â premiered Saturday at the New York Film Festival, capping off a week that saw scores of women lodge sexual assault allegations against notorious producer Harvey Weinstein. Coincidentally (or not), Weinstein helped to rekindle Allenâs career in the â90s after the directorâs adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, accused Allen of molesting her. If Allenâs depictions of ingĂ©nues and the intellectual older men they worship (or, in this movieâs case, resent) werenât already worth several eye rolls, the arrival of âWonder Wheelâ â distributed, no less, by a company that just fired an executive for alleged sexual harassment â couldnât come at a more inopportune moment.
This calamity isnât worth it. Even Allenâs laziest scripts tend to contain decent movies begging for air, but talented actresses wind up ensnared in the half-baked words he scribbles for them. Here, itâs Kate Winslet and Juno Temple who are subjected to the stardust memories of Allenâs imperial phase, when films like âAnnie Hall,â âManhattan,â âHannah and Her Sistersâ and âInteriorsâ made him one of Americaâs sharpest observers of neurotic metropolitan repartee.
Winslet plays Ginny, a Yankee-fried waitress at a clam house on the Coney Island boardwalk. Sheâs already lost one marriage to infidelity, and now Ginny has taken a liking to Mickey, a smooth-talking wannabe playwright with a penchant for âmelodrama and larger-than-life characters.â Said playwright â a military vet working as a lifeguard and studying at NYU â is played, for some reason, by Justin Timberlake. The pop stud proved to be a promising actor in âThe Social Networkâ and âBlack Snake Moan,â but his baby-blue eyes and youthful forehead canât save him now. Seeming uncomfortable with the rhythm of Allenâs theatrical writing, Timberlake is stiff and inauthentic. He canât stop the feeling because he never starts with any credible emotions in the first place. Jim Belushi, playing Ginnyâs virile husband, Humpty, is no help, except to convince us that sheâd be better off without the putz. (âYouâre being moody,â he often tells her. Blech.)
A simplistic reading of âWonder Wheelâ yields a compelling thesis: Ginnyâs domestic claustrophobia and working-class tedium are partly the fault of her brash groom, who commands his wife to complete household chores and groans because she doesnât want to go fishing with his buddies. But âWheelâ denies Ginny, who is swept up in a web of passion and sorrow, the complexity she deserves. Winsletâs strong will doesnât jell with the frazzled, delusional wreck to which Ginny is often reduced. That this is Allenâs idea of a strong female lead is telling.
The dynamics are further complicated because Humptyâs daughter, Carolina (Temple), has shown up unannounced after five years of estrangement from her father. In the midst of Ginnyâs affair with Mickey, the dramatist also falls for Carolina, creating a love triangle that exists in the snoozy space between screwball satire and marital melodrama.
Of course, everything comes to a head. Mickey wants to be Eugene OâNeill, and, if âWonder Wheelâ is any evidence, so does Woody Allen. Thereâs a concise play buried in here somewhere, but itâs lost in the movieâs temperamental fuss. Allenâs trademark characters-talking-in-circles dialogue falls flat because the tonal specifics of âWheelâ are so slapdash. Characters might as well grab megaphones as they broadcast their precise feelings, which occurs frequently. (âIâve become consumed with jealousy,â Ginny declares, to which you might want to respond with an emphatic, âEnough!â) The whole thing is mind-numbingly artificial.
Winslet is no master when it comes to American accents, but she does her best Brooklyn husk, narrowly overcoming the chichi, undercooked material sheâs been handed. The movieâs third act drifts into the unraveling-woman territory that better served Cate Blanchett in âBlue Jasmine,â but Winslet manages to nail a couple of monologues with all the gusto of a veteran actress able to thrive on any turf.
âWonder Wheelâ is further enhanced by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who also gave Allenâs âCafĂ© Societyâ a sun-speckled elegance. Here, Storaro frames Coney Island with lush nostalgia. When things are going swell for Ginny and Mickey, the sunny skyâs blue hues glisten against pearly clouds. When events turn dreary, the gray of the rain crackles, as if disappointment is drizzling on the characters. In other words, Storaro does Allenâs work for him.
Why do we â that nebulous âweâ that indicts Hollywood executives and everyday moviegoers alike â keep giving Allen a platform? Apparently legends get to do whatever they want, thorny personal lives notwithstanding. I believe itâs possible to separate art from the artist who created it, but doing so implies the art itself is worth much. These days, Allenâs rarely is. Boy, bye.
âWonder Wheelâ opens in theaters Dec. 1.