Review: Wonder Wheel

Image courtesy of Amazon Studios.

For more than five decades, Woody Allen has been churning out a movie - occasionally two - per year and a number of them have been great or very good, a large amount of them good and at least a dozen just average or mediocre. It is to be expected that when you're working that much, the quality will not always remain on the same level. So, suffice it to say that "Wonder Wheel," the director's latest, is not among his better films. It's also not among his worst, but a misfire regardless.

That being said, the picture is often visually stunning. The cinematography by Vittorio Storaro and lighting are beautiful, resulting in one of the most gorgeously shot Woody Allen films since "Manhattan." In particular, there's a sequence during which Kate Winslet - in a rare example of the Woody stand-in being portrayed by a woman - speaks to her step-daughter (played by Juno Temple) regarding matters of love in a bedroom as the lights of Coney Island flash through their window, resulting in an ever-changing color palette, that nearly takes the breath away. It's a moment of visual beauty.

Unfortunately, the story of "Wonder Wheel" isn't as intriguing. Similar to "Blue Jasmine," albeit much less successfully, Allen's latest is a melodrama in which a woman - Winslet's Ginny - begins to come unglued, but this time in 1950s-era Coney Island.

In the film, Ginny is married to Humpty (Jim Belushi), a carnival worker, and spends her days waiting tables at a clam house. Her son (Jack Gore) is a pyromaniac and Humpty's daughter, Carolina (Temple), is married to a gangster, from whom she has fled and is now being hunted by two goons (Tony Sirico and Steve Schirippa, both from "The Sopranos"). Neither Ginny nor Humpty are glad to see the young woman, although the latter eventually relents. Meanwhile, Ginny is having an affair with a lifeguard named Micky, a wannabe playwright who also stands in for Allen, although he eventually also sets his sights on Carolina.

While Cate Blanchett got a lot of mileage - and an Oscar - from playing a melodramatic heroine in Allen's much better "Blue Jasmine," Winslet is lumped with a character who can best be described as the Angry Woman Scorned. Winslet is undoubtedly a great actress - one of the best we've got - but here she's forced to play a character whose problems hail from the writing, not the portraying. Allen has long been a great writer of women's characters, from "Annie Hall" and "Hannah and Her Sisters" to "Bullets Over Broadway," "Blue Jasmine" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." In this film, not so much. It doesn't help that much of Winslet's dialogue - and much of the other actors in the film - is delivered via shouting.

While Allen mined living under the Cyclone in "Annie Hall" for comic gold, the foibles of his characters on Coney Island's boardwalk in "Wonder Wheel" give the impression of bits pasted together from his other films. Winslet's problems seem too familiar to Blanchett's character in "Blue Jasmine," the mob story feels like a riff on "Bullets Over Broadway" and a decision made by Ginny late in the film that negatively impacts another reminded me slightly of "Crimes and Misdemeanors."

Allen has made some very good films in the 21st century - most notably the great "Match Point," but also "Midnight in Paris," "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" and "Blue Jasmine" - but a few of his lesser works have also been released during the past 17 years. "Wonder Wheel" ranks fairly low in his oeuvre. As I've mentioned, it's not a bad film - it features beautiful photography and a great cast, albeit one whose talents aren't utilized to full capacity - but a relatively forgettable one in the director's long - and mostly very good - filmography.