WONDER WHEEL (2017)

Genre: Drama
Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Kate Winslet, Juno Temple, Jim Belushi, Justin Timberlake, Max Casella
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Sexual Scene)
Released By: Shaw Organisation 
Official Website: http://www.wonderwheelmovie.com/home/

Opening Day: 22 February 2018

Synopsis: WONDER WHEEL tells the story of four characters whose lives intertwine amid the hustle and bustle of the Coney Island amusement park in the 1950s: Ginny (Kate Winslet), a melancholy, emotionally volatile former actress now working as a waitress in a clam house; Humpty (Jim Belushi), Ginny’s rough-hewn carousel operator husband; Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a handsome young lifeguard who dreams of becoming a playwright; and Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s long-estranged daughter, who is now hiding out from gangsters at her father’s apartment.

Movie Review:

Wonder Wheel, the latest from Woody Allen, is a beautifully shot movie. Set in the 1950s in the New York City neighbourhood of Coney Island, known as a leisure destination featuring amusement parks, diners and the beach, the film opens to an explosion of vintage hues and cheery colours. With the sun, sand and the sea, one already looks forward to at least the atmosphere and holiday vibes—ever present in Allen movies.

Kate Winslet is Ginny, a vulnerable, flighty waitress pushing forty, who works in a clam bar and still reminisces fondly about her former life as a stage actress, even as she juggles work with fielding complaints about the latest fires set by her young pyromaniac son, Richie. Ginny lives with her husband Humpty (Jim Belushi), a roughneck carousel operator. Humpty may take to drink if not for Ginny’s close watch, but he is a family man who fishes and brings the fish home for dinner, an overall likeable salt-of-the-earth kind of guy—meaning, nice but a bit boring for Ginny. As we find out, she was rescued by Humpty during a low point in her old life and is with him out of gratitude—not love.

This precarious semblance of a household is shattered by two characters this summer. Enter Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s beautiful estranged daughter from a previous marriage, who married into mafia and has run away, now on the run from the husband and to hide at her father’s place. And enter Mickey (Justin Timberlake), narrator of the film, handsome lifeguard at the beach who dreams of being a playwright, who sweeps Ginny off her feet. The two begin an affair--until Mickey meets the younger and beautiful Carolina and sparks fly. Meanwhile, the clawing reach of Carolina’s mobster ex looms ever closer…

Besides the lush cinematography and production design, Wonder Wheel enjoys a likeable cast of characters for the most part. There are all-around nice guys, in the overbearing but caring Humpty and literature-spouting Mickey, though there probably was a better fit than Timberlake, who only adds the charm of a young lover, but not the dash of thrill that would have made the illicit affair more convincing.

It is, however, Kate Winslet who steals the show with Ginny the frazzled housewife, wrenched apart from all sides by multiple conflicting forces—love and duty, excitement and stability. Her begrudging acceptance of Carolina’s intrusion will ultimately be tested, as jealousy bubbles to overwhelm her innate goodness. Juno Temple, equally English but also melding in effortlessly in Allen’s New York, is also luminous in her innocence and beauty, though she ultimately gets insufficient screen time so that contention and contrast between Carolina and Ginny is not as palpable as it could be. She is someone we would really like to see more of in future.

What works here is the stellar cast, charming setting (Coney Island will be added to many viewers’ New York to-do lists) and vacation atmosphere that was present in To Rome with Love, Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona among others. What doesn’t is the story and the script. The already predictable plot is stagy, smacking of Blue Jasmine, just transplanted six decades prior and to the East Coast.

After all, the conclusion, which is subdued like many Woody Allen films—given that there’s often no big bad wolf (this mobster that we never see isn’t quite counted as one)—leaves us unsatisfied. There’s little humour to chuckle at too. Allen’s films have been rather formulaic and rely heavily on his writing. This is far from his best and the trite script here does little to save it. 

Movie Rating:

(Far from Woody Allen’s best, but worth a watch for its gorgeously-rendered colours of 1950s’ Coney Island and Kate Winslet’s outstanding performance)

Review by Fen Chia