There is no denying that Woody Allen is an extremely influential filmmaker, and one of the most prolific directors of the past few decades, usually releasing a new film every year. This is admirable and has resulted in some great films. However, there have been some misfires in Allen’s career, as not every film can be a success. I did enjoy some of his more flawed works, such as Irrational Man and To Rome With Love, finding them to be well-written, fascinating character studies with great performances. Allen has a true knack for three things: his casts, his attention to detail in terms of setting, and his stories, and even when one of these do tend to be weaker in some of his weaker works, another excels. It goes without saying that Wonder Wheel was positioned to be a film that could potentially be fantastic in terms of all three of these criteria, with a talented cast, a strong story and a setting that was perfect for a period drama from the mind of Woody Allen. I can say, without any hyperbole, that Wonder Wheel is arguably the worst film Woody Allen has ever made, a film with so many flaws and so few redeeming qualities, it becomes despicably bad, and honestly, I do not feel the need to mince my words in any way, because everyone involved in this film should have known better. The result is an overlong, dull mess of a film that does not even approach being even vaguely good, which is the ultimate tragedy in my eyes, considering the talented involved in this film.

Wonder Wheel has such a promising premise – In the 1950s, Ginny (Kate Winslet) is a middle-aged woman who yearns for her younger days when she  had a promising career as an up-and-coming actress, forced to live out her days working as a waitress at a clam restaurant on Coney Island, where her husband Humpty (Jim Belushi) works as a carousel operator. Suddenly, Humpty’s daughter Carolina (Juno Temple) arrives at their home without any warning, and it is revealed that she is running from the mob, after her husband, a gangster, discovered that she knew a bit too much about his racketeering business, and instructed her to be taken care of. To make matters worse, Ginny is having an affair with Mickey Rubin (Justin Timberlake), a lifeguard on Bay 7 by day, and a poet and aspiring playwright by night, who is inspired by the works of Eugene O’Neill, hoping to write his own human social tragedies. Mickey soon finds himself falling in love with Carolina, much to the chagrin of Ginny, who enjoys the youthful attention she receives from Mickey, which feeds her inner-desire to be an actress, performing a certain identity for him, and for the world. There is also a child that is a pyromaniac, which probably has some symbolism, but it more likely just a poor narrative choice by Allen, used to add some comedic relief to a film far more dour than it should have been.

As you can see, the storyline in Wonder Wheel is not exactly particularly entertaining or alluring, and if it sounds like a bad parody of a Tennessee Williams play, and that is because it plays almost exactly like someone attempting to make something akin to the masterful theatrical and cinematic melodramas of the era in which this film is set, without actually making a film as rich and enthralling or melodramatic as the works that apparently inspired it. Allen has made films that may not exactly appear to be following this formula in terms of setting, but do retain the same sense of character development and meaningful understanding of the story (such as Blue Jasmine being nothing less than a masterful film inspired by A Streetcar Named Desire). Yet, as Allen has shown countless times before, the premises to his films are rarely ever complete, and usually serve to add a certain level of aloofness to the film, which is almost certainly better and far more entertaining than the general storyline would suggest. I can guarantee you that Wonder Wheel is nothing more than what it is marketed as – in fact, it may be an astounding example of a film that is actually marketed far better than the final result ends up being. This final result is a bloated and dull story that attempts to woo the audience with a touching, realist story, but rather ends up boring the viewer with its bleak simplicity and lazy execution.

Kate Winslet is one of the most talented actresses of her generation, and I was ecstatic about the opportunity to see her working with Woody Allen. Winslet has been shown to elevate even the most mediocre material, and she is consistently great, even when the films around her are sometimes subpar. However, Wonder Wheel was the first time I actually felt bitterly disappointed in one of Winslet’s performances. Ginny is a character devoid of any personality, and Winslet does not develop her character enough to make the audience care about her. She is supposed to be this complex character who is a tragically faded actress who lives a life of unwanted piety and humility while still managing to retain that spark of hope that she may someday achieve the fame she feels she deserves, which is often instigated by her complex relationship with vices, such as alcohol and her affair with the young lifeguard. It is actually hilariously clear that Allen and Winslet saw the success of the titular character in Blue Jasmine (also played by an acclaimed, Academy Award-winning actress) and attempted to replicate that success. It simply did not, and the failure in creating a complex character here was palpable. Winslet is not entirely awful, but she is also not particularly good. She is painfully mediocre and I have never seen her commit to a performance less than she did here. I am not entirely sure if it was the writing that failed Winslet, or if Winslet just gave an uncharacteristically middling performance. It is a tolerable performance, and for a less-heralded actress, it may have been a great performance. However, I just expected more from Kate Winslet, who really did not do anything that was more than passable here. Understand that a few monologues and moments of self-introspection (as well as a breakdown or two) do not do anything in constructing a complex character if there isn’t anything to build upon, and Ginny is quite simply one of the most unremarkable characters Allen has ever created.

However, for all the flaws in her character and the performance she gave, Winslet was not awful. The rest of the cast of Wonder Wheel is something entirely different. Jim Belushi is given his biggest role in years, but to reiterate the point I made above, giving an actor a bigger role does not automatically make their performance particularly good. His performance as Humpty is underwhelming and far too inconsistent. Unlike Ginny, there are genuine attempts to make Belushi’s character fascinating and to get under his skin to understand who he is and where he came from (a promising piece of character development) – but that is all abandoned when Humpty is just clearly constructed as a foil for Winslet’s character, a loving but troubled husband who drives his wife into the arms of another man. Belushi is not terrible, but he also gives an indifferent performance, contributing nothing to this film other than being present in it. As wonderful as it is to see an underrated character actor like Belushi in a major role such as this, it means very little when that role requires nearly nothing from the actor.

Justin Timberlake, on the other hand, is horrendously bad. Timberlake has shown himself to be relatively adept at comedic acting, whether it is as a scene-stealing guest host on Saturday Night Live, or in broad comedy films such as Friends with Benefits, or even in the occasional drama, such as The Social Network, where he was nothing other than passable. Here’s the thing: Justin Timberlake is not a particularly good dramatic actor, and Wonder Wheel positions Timberlake as a Marlon Brando-surrogate, a dashing and apparently hyper-intelligent romantic resolute for Ginny, someone who incites a passion in her that gives her hope. I have nothing against Timberlake as an actor, but he is just completely unconvincing in this role. Timberlake has a natural charm that does not shine through here, and is replaced with a highly-artificial attempt at charisma that ultimately falls short, and results in a laughably bad performance from an actor who genuinely put an effort into this role, but it just fell entirely flat. I have to praise Juno Temple, who is actually very good and does amazingly well with the paltry material she is given. It is almost like she is in the wrong film because her performance is the only one I consider to be well-formed and interesting to watch.

There is one aspect of Wonder Wheel that is actually a roaring success and prevents this film from being entirely bad – the cinematography. Vittorio Storaro served as the director of photography on Wonder Wheel (as he did for Allen’s previous film, Café Society, as well as his upcoming film, A Rainy Day in New York), and it only takes a brief glimpse at Storaro’s impressive career to realize that he is one of the greatest cinematographers of all time, crafting some of the most beautiful and distinctive images in cinema history. Wonder Wheel is not an exception, and it manages to be absolutely stunning. Storaro’s compositions appear as authentic throwbacks to the 1950s, with his use of color and the camerawork that lingers on specific moments more than it should, contributing to the visual aesthetic of this film. The one and only redeeming quality of Wonder Wheel is that it is beautifully-shot, and is a contender for one of the most lovely visual aesthetics of the year. For a film so unbelievably gorgeous, it is a pity that the story is so lifeless, and it never matches the exuberance and visual splendor of the cinematography, which is an utter shame.

Wonder Wheel is not a good film at all. It features Woody Allen at his most hopelessly mediocre. The writing is probably the poorest Allen has ever written, with characters sometimes outright repeating phrases (and not for effect), and the dialogue does nothing to contribute to the story, rather being awkward and stilted beyond belief. The cast also does not have any chemistry, which is a tragic flaw, considering this is a film built on the relationship between characters. It almost seems like Allen just did not care when creating this film – very little clear effort was made other than in terms of the visual appearance of this film, and it becomes a dreadfully dull experience, and a film I did not enjoy in the slightest, which is unfortunate, as it has a setting that I am interested in, a cast I love and a filmmaker I admire. None of it worked, and it just felt too faulty to actually be considered enjoyable. It is an overblown, unfocused film, and I would go a bit easier on this film if it was not made with the involvement of a director and actors who should know much better than this. If I can say the biggest failure Wonder Wheel displays is that it has the one element that I have never quite felt when watching a Woody Allen film, whether it is a good film or a bad film: Wonder Wheel is boring, and considering Allen is one of our greatest writers and storytellers, that is unforgivable. Luckily, Allen’s failures never linger, as he will have another film out next year, so there isn’t time to worry too much about this film as a misfire, and we should just hope his next film is better than usual, because it has a lot to compensate for after the sheer mediocrity that was Wonder Wheel.