ReelBob: ‘Wonder Wheel’ ★½

By Bob Bloom

It’s a wonder if anyone can sit through Woody Allen’s excruciating “Wonder Wheel” and come away satisfied.

The film, set at Coney Island in the 1950s, feels like a play that Allen wrote, then shelved because he had second thoughts after rereading it.

Instead, Allen turned it into a movie, which, even at 101 minutes, is tedious, wordy, pretentious, repetitious and boring.

His characters, who work various jobs at beaches, restaurants and an amusement park at Coney Island, talk at each other as if they were reciting dialogue from a Eugene O’Neill play — and a bad one, at that.

The film’s two bright spots are the recreation of the Coney Island area and the performance of Kate Winslet as Ginny, an unstable former actress working at a clam house on the boardwalk. Ginny is married to Humpty (Jim Belushi), who runs the amusement park carousel.

Their volatile lives are disrupted by the return of Carolina (Juno Temple), Humpty’s daughter from a previous marriage, who needs a place to hide because the mob is after her for ratting out her ex-husband, a mobster.

Also in this messy stew is Mickey (Justin Timberlake), a lifeguard, who is having a summer fling with Ginny, meets Carolina and, of course, switches romantic ties from stepmother to stepdaughter.

All this feels like standard Allen territory, except that everything is so hackneyed that you really don’t give a darn about any of these characters.

As the movie and dialogue drags on and on, you begin to wish something would happen to make “Wonder Wheel” spin more quickly and unpredictably.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. The movie, like its title, simply goes around and around getting nowhere — and oh, so slowly.

Allen’s dialogue lacks its usual snap. The repartee, especially between Ginny and Humpty, sounds like stale regurgitation between Ralph and Alice Kramden from “The Honeymooners,” only without the comic inflections.

Any minute you expect to hear Humpty say, “To the moon, Ginny.” Even that would have been an improvement.

That is one of the film’s major flaws. These characters are not fleshed out; they are basic archetypes who have orbited Allen’s cinematic solar system for decades.

Most everything in “Wonder Wheel” rings false — the fiery passion, the arguments and violence, the philosophical musings. It all sounds like table reads at an early stage-play rehearsal.

“Wonder Wheel” offers some pretty scenery with its CGI recapturing of Coney Island.

And Winslet offers a few gut-wrenching scenes that raise her character above the others.

Mostly, however, “Wonder Wheel” is stale and insipid. It lacks that creative magic that Allen used to provide. Instead of a rabbit, the filmmaker just pulled air out of his filmmaking hat.

I am a member of the Indiana Film Journalists Association. My reviews appear at ReelBob (reelbob.com) and Rottentomatoes (www.rottentomatoes.com). I also review Blu-rays and DVDs. I can be reached by email at bobbloomjc@gmail.com or on Twitter @ReelBobBloom. Links to my reviews can be found on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

WONDER WHEEL
1½ stars out of 4
(PG-13), adult themes, sexual situations, language, smoking