wonder wheel movie review

Wonder Wheel

Given that it was very well received by an alarming number of colleagues when it played at the New York Film Festival in September, I’ve been trying to figure out a way that “Wonder Wheel” can be seen as good. Turgid even in its brightness, overwritten in a way that does nothing to camoflauge its first-draft quality, jaw-droppingly overacted by all but one of its central cast members; it’s a Woody Allen disaster that elicits both a cocked head and a dropped jaw. Given that Mr. Allen’s professional approach to moviemaking most resembles a basketball player’s free-throw practice—he endeavors to make a picture once a year, no exceptions, and has been hitting that goal for decades—variability of quality is a given. But, man, this one.

“Wonder Wheel” opens with narration from Mickey, a Coney Island lifeguard played by Justin Timberlake . His tale, he tells us, takes place in Coney Island in “the 1950s.” The disinclination to give a particular year is indicative of an overall slackness, we soon see. Although given that the movie’s ostensible theme song is the Jo Stafford recording of “You Belong To Me,” popular music mavens can infer it takes place during or after the summer of 1952.

Mickey tells the viewer he was, aside from being a Coney Island lifeguard, a student at New York University (hmm) and an aspiring playwright. Mr. Timberlake applies his standard admirable enthusiasm to his work here, but it also appears that everything he learned about “period” acting he picked up from watching Tim Matheson in “1941.” In any event, the story he tells at first is not his yet. Warning the viewer that he himself has a penchant for melodrama, he speaks of a family whose living quarters are smack dab in the middle of Coney Island’s fried-food and amusement-park-rides bustle. This is a variant on Alvy Singer’s joke about living right under the Cyclone, Coney Island’s famed roller coaster, in “ Annie Hall ,” but here it’s played for trauma.

Matriarch Ginny ( Kate Winslet ), wife to oafish Humpty ( Jim Belushi ) and mother (from a prior marriage) to a sullen ten-year-old pyromaniac, has enough stress and disappointment in her life without the constant, headache-inducing noise. The trio’s drama—Humpty has trouble keeping off the sauce; Ginny is haunted by a past that promised romance and glory and, when she was still aspiring to be an actress, fame; Junior just can’t find enough things to set on fire—is framed within impossibly gorgeous Coney Island sunsets pouring into their domicile.

Then Mickey comes into Ginny’s life, and rekindles her passion with the kind of thing a lifeguard who is played by Justin Timberlake traditionally offers. But not before her home is rocked by the arrival of Carolina ( Juno Temple ), Humpty’s adult daughter from his own prior marriage, whom blustery Humpty dotes on, after forgiving her for her transgression—marrying a Manhattan mobster from whom she is now on the run. Because then, as now, when you want to hide out from a criminal in Manhattan, what you do is go to Coney Island. Yes, I know, and the script contains more than one convolution of logic to explain why Carolina’s move “makes sense.”

Mickey’s attentions, and his refinement, make it all go away. Except Mickey soon meets Carolina. She is vulnerable, and is receptive to pieces of literature he offers her, and all that. Even viewers with zero familiarity with the director’s own domestic situation and how it came to be are likely to find this plot twist of a love triangle involving a stepchild strangely off-putting. In any event, a lot of things do not end well.

At one point, during a confrontation, Ginny exclaims, “Yes! I am consumed with jealousy!” and this is the pitch at which almost all the dialogue sits. Now, given that the frame story is Mickey’s, and that he himself admits a weakness for dramatic exaggeration, one could attribute the constantly broiling floridness of “Wonder Wheel,” from the “Plan Nine” style of its dialogue to the hothouse color palette of Vittorio Storaro ’s cinematography, to some sort of Brechtian distancing strategy behind which the real story or statement lies. But I don’t think that’s it. Allen is only effectively Brechtian when he’s nailed down a certain style in which to wield his brush; he did a much better job of it in “Shadows and Fog,” a film widely regarded as a failure, than he does here.

No, I think that “Wonder Wheel” is a mess in which the pastiches of Tennessee Williams and CinemaScope melodramas of “the 1950s” are meant to ignite like fireworks but instead just pop like stink bombs. Of the primary cast members, only Temple, playing Carolina as if she’s no big deal, escapes without embarrassment.

Mr. Allen’s next free-throw, a film starring Jude Law , Selena Gomez , and Elle Fanning , should come our way in late 2018. Given the way his name has been repeatedly brought up in the context of revelations of sexual misconduct in Hollywood, whether he’ll be afforded a place on the court any time soon is for the first time in some time substantially in doubt. 

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Max Casella as Ryan
• Justin Timberlake as Mickey Rubin
• Geneva Carr as Mary
• Juno Temple as Carolina
• Jim Belushi as Humpty
• Kate Winslet as Ginny
• David Krumholtz as Jake
• Alisa Lepselter

Cinematographer

• Vittorio Storaro
• Woody Allen

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Wonder Wheel

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Watch Wonder Wheel with a subscription on Prime Video, rent on Fandango at Home, or buy on Fandango at Home.

What to Know

Wonder Wheel gathers a charming cast in an inviting period setting, but they aren't enough to consistently breathe life into a Woody Allen project that never quite comes together.

Critics Reviews

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Woody Allen

Kate Winslet

Justin Timberlake

Juno Temple

Jim Belushi

Max Casella

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Review: ‘Wonder Wheel,’ Woody Allen’s Coney Island Memory Palace

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By Manohla Dargis

• Nov. 30, 2017

“Wonder Wheel,” Woody Allen’s latest movie, is one of his more unfortunate contributions to cinema. It tells the story of a desperately, unhappily married woman whose affair with a local Romeo is derailed when he takes notice of her stepdaughter, whose breasts have been lit to glow like Vermeer peaches . The heart wants what it wants, as Mr. Allen once said by way of explaining his affair with his now wife, Soon-Yi, the daughter of his longtime ex, Mia Farrow. I tend to think it’s a bad idea to put a movie on the couch, but what if it climbs on the couch and then starts winking?

“Wonder Wheel” returns Mr. Allen to Coney Island, the childhood home of his alter ego Alvy Singer, the narrator of “Annie Hall” who claims to have grown up under the amusement park’s roller coaster. (“I have some trouble between fantasy and reality,” Alvy says .) In “Wonder Wheel,” the sad wife, Ginny (Kate Winslet), lives in an apartment that looks directly onto the park’s looming Ferris wheel. The attraction obscures her view of the ocean, literalizing already narrow horizons, and casts deep, expressionistic blue and red light on the apartment’s dilapidated interior and its equally worn inhabitants.

Ginny isn’t all used up, despite the insistently unflattering way she is often presented. She winces and frowns a lot, and the camera conspires with the lighting and makeup to catch every twitch of distress, and the sweaty, oily sheen she never seems able to blot away. It’s no surprise that she’s worried. She works in a clam house on the boardwalk, scrambling for hoi polloi, while back at home she has to juggle her loud, loutish husband, Humpty (Jim Belushi), and her son, Richie (Jack Gore). Like the young Alvy in “Annie Hall,” Richie is a redhead. But while Alvy is depressed about the universe, Richie seems largely troubled by his home life, specifically his demonstrably miserable mother.

So, when Mickey (Justin Timberlake, too modern a presence), a lifeguard and self-described romantic, gives Ginny the once over, she gratefully falls into his arms. “Wonder Wheel” more or less becomes Ginny’s story, but she doesn’t get to own it. The movie is narrated by Mickey, who pops in and out and looks directly into the camera. He has literary ambitions, as he likes to remind us, as well as a pad in Greenwich Village. For a while, Mickey offers Ginny a respite from her everyday grind, at least until the arrival of Carolina (a fine Juno Temple), Humpty’s daughter from an earlier marriage. She’s on the run from her gangster husband. “I know where all the bodies are buried,” Carolina says.

Somewhat of a cultural magpie, Mr. Allen has often folded bits and pieces — and at times entire conceits — from other work into his movies. Mickey mentions Eugene O’Neill , a reference that suggests we’re meant to see something of that playwright in Ginny and Humpty at their most raw and boozily fraught. Mr. Allen’s often blunt, overwrought dialogue, however, also alternately brings to mind Budd Schulberg (“I coulda been a contender”) and imitation Clifford Odets. In some scenes, you almost expect Mr. Belushi, who’s playing his heart out, to start bellowing about someone named Lefty. Much like its gaudy title attraction, “Wonder Wheel” keeps on turning, even while going nowhere.

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Film Review: ‘Wonder Wheel’

Kate Winslet takes command as a 1950s Coney Island waitress trapped in despair — until she meets a lifeguard played by Justin Timberlake — in a Woody Allen drama that's far from major, but better than minor.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Woody Allen films now come in three essential flavors, or maybe it just comes down to three levels of quality. Once in a blue jasmine moon, he comes up with an enthralling act of high-wire inspiration, like “Match Point” or “Blue Jasmine,” that proves that he can still be as major as any filmmaker out there. Then there are the quaintly crafted, phoned-in mediocrities, like “Café Society” or “To Rome with Love,” where the jokes feel old and the situations older, like the Woody Allen version of paint by numbers. But then there are the middle-drawer Allen films that still percolate with energy and flair, like “Bullets Over Broadway” or “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” They’re too baubly and calculated to be great, with each Woody trope locking into place, yet damned if they don’t hold you and even, in their way, add up to something (even if it’s ultimately something minor).

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“ Wonder Wheel ” is one of those movies. Set in Coney Island in 1950, it’s a bit too tidy and programmed in a well-made-play-from-the-postwar-era kind of way. Yet it’s more than a therapy session with antiquated wisecracks. It’s got movement and flow, it’s got a vibrant sunset look of honky-tonk nostalgia, and it’s got a bittersweet mood of lyrical despair that the film stays true to right up until the final note. It’s also strikingly acted by a cast of players who don’t just walk through the Woody motions (though at least three of them can be caught doing the stutter); they grab their roles and charge them with life. “Wonder Wheel” isn’t a comedy — on the contrary, it often feels like the most earnest kitchen-sink drama that Clifford Odets never wrote. It may or may not turn out to be an awards picture, but it’s a good night out, and that’s not nothing.

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In the 20 years since “Titanic,” Kate Winslet ’s acting has acquired a distinct edge, a certain remorseless quality of harsh-tongued resolve that she wears quite proudly. She long ago made a decision to stop being anyone’s dream-factory sweetheart, and Allen, in “Wonder Wheel,” has written her a role that fits the new hardscrabble Winslet like a rough but perfectly shaped glove.

She plays Ginny, a once-fiery redhead who used to be married to a jazz drummer she adored, but that all seems like a mirage from the past. Ginny, who’s approaching her 40th birthday, now works as a waitress in a Coney Island clam bar and lives with her 10-year-old son, Richie (Jack Gore), and her second husband, Humpty ( Jim Belushi ) — not the boy’s father — in a cramped apartment directly across from the giant blue Ferris wheel with pink lettering that’s the amusement park’s signature attraction.

The image of the Wonder Wheel literally fills the living-room window, but that’s the least oppressive aspect of being there. The sound of arcade gunfire drives Ginny nuts. And so does Humpty, a gruff Stanley Kowalski-Ralph Kramden 1950s lunkhead in a wifebeater who operates the Coney Island merry-go-round, and whose idea of fun is to have Ginny tag along while he fishes with his buddies or goes to Dodgers games, all of which she refuses to do, because it literally bores the life out of her.

Snappish and morose, fueled by the occasional secret slurp from the whiskey bottle she keeps hidden under the sink, Ginny seems like a bit of a pill — but actually, she’s a romantic who’s fast running out of hope. Winslet plays her with a controlled rage that can seem lashingly arbitrary, as if she were suffering from borderline personality disorder, but then you realize that Ginny is reacting, with a piteously sane logic, to her closed-in circumstances. Her son seems outwardly normal, except that he’s a pyromaniac who keeps setting bonfires. You can imagine that sort of thing milked for cheap laughs in another Woody Allen movie, but the most interesting thing about it here is that the film plays it straight. Those fires are the passion that the kid (in his channeling way) keeps trying to ignite before his mother feels the dying of the light.

Then she meets Mickey Rubin, a lifeguard played, with high hair and a gliding spirit of postwar bohemian pretension, by Justin Timberlake . Mickey, a Navy veteran of World War II, is studying to be a playwright in the master’s program at NYU. He’s got a flat in Greenwich Village, and he experiences life as a drama he’s living through; we know that because he’s the film’s talking-into-the-camera narrator, and he keeps telling us, in essence, that all the world’s a stage. To Mickey, having a summer fling with Ginny doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just another act in the drama he’s living. But Ginny, of course, thinks it means everything. She’s a woman whose condition is misery, and this will be her great escape, her one and only last hope.

A neat dramatic trick that powers “Wonder Wheel” is that every character in it, even when they act badly, has a good heart. Belushi, wriggling free of his aging-bro mannerisms, gives a performance as the stunted, desperate Humpty that rises to moments of bellicose ferocity, yet he’s never a gratuitous mad dog. Humpty has his own breaking heart, which we first see when his estranged daughter, Carolina (Juno Temple), shows up. The two haven’t spoken in five years, but Carolina, played by Temple as a fallen ingénue who’s still a flower of sweetness, is fleeing from the gangster who Humpty warned her not to marry; she didn’t heed the advice, and then she spilled the beans about her husband to the FBI. Humpty now looks at his daughter with a fusion of resentment and devotion that feels touchingly true. He moves her into the house, and sends her to night school. All of which goes more or less well until Carolina, too, meets Mickey the lifeguard.

The more films that Woody Allen makes, the more it can seem as though he assembles them by re-arranging the same dozen spare parts, and in “Wonder Wheel” you can tick them off as you’re watching them. The love triangle that plays out between Ginny, Mickey, and Carolina carries an unmistakable echo of the central romantic situation in “Manhattan.” Ginny, the drama-queen heroine of a certain age who feels life closing in on her, is Woody going to the well of “Blue Jasmine” again — he still draws water from it, only this time the well is less deep. The gangster subplot, with Steven Schirripa and Tony Sirico showing up as underworld goons, provides a soupçon of “Bullets Over Broadway.” And when Ginny arrives at her own moment of destiny, which involves a choice to either help someone in dire need or to do quite the opposite, she hovers on the phone like Martin Landau in “Crimes and Misdemeanors”: an “ordinary” person suddenly playing God by exercising control over matters of life and death.

The movie also overflows with general quotes from what might be called The Woody Philosophy. Do I mean all the chatter about fate, our tragic flaws, and the universe’s ultimate way of determining everything? Yes, but I also refer to that aspect of The Woody Philosophy that says that a man like Mickey, in the midst of his involvement with a complicated middle-aged woman, will inexorably be drawn to the tender uncomplicated embrace of a sexy adoring younger babe. At one point Mickey actually says, “The heart has its own hieroglyphics.” Yes, and so does the penis.

There are moments in “Wonder Wheel” — not many, but a few — that color in the characters’ experiences in a way that can leave you breathless. Under the boardwalk, against the blackened wood, with the twilight bathing her in an orange glow that’s positively Sirkian, Winslet delivers a monologue about how Ginny destroyed her marriage, and her harshness falls away to reveal the excruciating tenderness of paradise lost. And in the big scene at the end, it’s sad but thrilling to behold what an actress-to-the-core Ginny really is. Yet if “Wonder Wheel” is structured as a tragedy, a tale of people brought low by their own unconscious hand, you don’t necessarily feel the forces of fate at work. What you feel is the force of a filmmaker who’s been at this game too long to leave much to chance.

Reviewed at New York Film Festival (Main Slate), Oct. 13, 2017. Rating: PG-13 Running time: 101 MIN.

• Production: An Amazon Studios release of an Amazon Studios, Gravier Productions of a Perdido Production prod: Erika Aronson, Letty Aronson, Edward Walson. Executive producers: Mark Attanasio, Ron Chez, Adam B. Stern.
• With: Kate Winslet, Justin Timberlake, Juno Temple, Jim Belushi, Max Casella, Brittini Schreiber, Geneva Carr, Tony Sirico, Steve Schirripa.

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Parents' guide to, wonder wheel.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 2 Reviews
• Kids Say 1 Review

Common Sense Media Review

Adult themes in heavy but beautifully filmed drama.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that although Woody Allen's dark drama Wonder Wheel doesn't have any nudity or on-screen violence, it's not intended for kids. It deals with serious themes of adultery, suicide, murder, and consequences for past actions. A couple has sex in public, almost fully clothed. Mob killings and…

Why Age 15+?

Virtually no drinking or smoking until the final third of the film, when charact

One scene of characters having sex in public; both partners are almost fully clo

Language isn't constant or extreme but includes "goddamn," "hell," "crap," "Jesu

The violence -- reports of domestic abuse and mob killings -- takes place offscr

Any Positive Content?

This is a dark movie that isn't characterized by positive messages. Bad things h

One character is actively trying to learn from past mistakes and take constructi

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Virtually no drinking or smoking until the final third of the film, when characters crack under stress. Then there's drinking/drunkenness and stress smoking. The drinking, particularly, is presented negatively (one character is an alcoholic who's trying to overcome his addiction and history of domestic abuse).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

One scene of characters having sex in public; both partners are almost fully clothed. Less specific/adult talk of sex than typical in a Woody Allen film, but it's still present. An extramarital affair is key to the story, so viewers see several encounters beginning or ending (arriving at a bedroom, etc.).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language isn't constant or extreme but includes "goddamn," "hell," "crap," "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation), a possible use of "f--k" (hard to be sure), and some name-calling and derogatory ethnic terms.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

The violence -- reports of domestic abuse and mob killings -- takes place offscreen but has an impact. A presumed mob killing isn't shown but is meant to linger in the mind. A young character is a pyromaniac.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

This is a dark movie that isn't characterized by positive messages. Bad things happen to good people, though some at least attempt to come clean about difficult secrets and/or overcome pride to heal a family rift.

Positive Role Models

One character is actively trying to learn from past mistakes and take constructive steps to build a future. One is trying to help a family member and overcome alcoholism. But the others are involved in pretty bad stuff, from alcoholism to domestic abuse and more.

Parents need to know that although Woody Allen 's dark drama Wonder Wheel doesn't have any nudity or on-screen violence, it's not intended for kids. It deals with serious themes of adultery, suicide, murder, and consequences for past actions. A couple has sex in public, almost fully clothed. Mob killings and domestic abuse are discussed/implied but not shown. The only child character is a pyromaniac who's headed for serious trouble. Drinking and smoking are presented negatively but are part of the building stress of the film's third act; language is infrequent but includes "hell" and "Jesus Christ" (as an exclamation), as well as some insults and derogatory ethnic terms. As usual for an Allen film, it's packed with well-known actors, including Kate Winslet , Jim Belushi , and Justin Timberlake . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (2)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 2 parent reviews

Dark but fascinating

What's the story.

In 1950s Coney Island, Ginny ( Kate Winslet ), a frustrated one-time actress, is married to struggling-but-good Humpty ( Jim Belushi ), a man she doesn't love. Ginny's young son from her first marriage is traumatized by her past behavior, a situation that's reflected in his growing pyromania. Ginny meets Mickey ( Justin Timberlake ), a handsome lifeguard and aspiring playwright; sparks fly, and their affair begins. Then Humpty's daughter from his first marriage, Carolina ( Juno Temple ), arrives, on the run from her mobster husband. Complications ensue.

Is It Any Good?

What Woody Allen and his collaborators have accomplished here -- in one of his darkest dramas, taking place in one of his brightest settings -- is beautiful ugliness. Wonder Wheel , named for the most famous attraction at the film's Coney Island location, is full of people haunted by their histories: infidelity, impulsive choices that led to criminal ties, alcoholism, domestic abuse, callous behavior that cost everything and traumatized children. They're all part of the drama that's framed by Mickey, the lifeguard/former sailor/playwright/leading man who narrates from an admittedly unreliable perspective. It's likely no accident that Mickey has some similarities with Tennessee Williams' characters, including Tom from The Glass Menagerie ; Ginny ( Winslet ), too, isn't far removed from Williams' Blanche DuBois or Maggie the Cat. Winslet turns in one of the best performances of her great career, inhabiting Ginny's moments of soaring hope and painful deterioration. And Belushi delivers surely his finest work as the husband who at first seems like a drunken lout but then reveals a beating heart capable of change and love. Temple , too, has layers to reveal as the daughter on the run. These characters, plus Ginny's son (whose pyromania mirrors his mother's mania), are all locked in a drama that inextricably leads from the candy colors of a beach-set amusement park to somewhere unlit and starless.

Legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (known for Bernardo Bertolucci movies including The Last Tango in Paris and Francis Ford Coppola films including Apocalypse Now ) rejoins Allen after Café Society to craft perhaps the richest visual world of the storied filmmaker's career. Storaro bathes scenes in dusky ambers and shades of blue; bold, colorful choices that make the scenes look painted. He brings new camera movement and framing to Allen's work, energizing it. Along with longtime Allen production designer Santo Loquasto, Storaro creates the feeling of being inside the beautifully crafted set of an Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill or Williams play -- clearly intentionally, in keeping with Mickey's playwright's perspective. That might also explain Allen's odd use of repetitive, almost amateurish dialogue in the film's first extended scene, possibly establishing this as the world of a young writer's mind. Wonder Wheel is perhaps Allen's most technically accomplished film, lush and delicious to view, though its darkness and morally asymmetrical universe will be a turnoff to some.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how infidelity is presented in Wonder Wheel . How does it compare to what you usually see? Are either of the adulterers virtuous in their own way? Are there consequences for their actions? Is either trustworthy?

Does this seem like a morality tale to you? Do the bad people get punished and the good ones get rewarded? Or is it morally uneven?

Do you sympathize with any of the characters? Did your mind change about any of them as the story goes on? Do you consider any of them role models ?

How is this film similar to or different from Woody Allen's other movies? What do his films tend to have in common?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 1, 2017
• On DVD or streaming : March 6, 2018
• Cast : Kate Winslet , Justin Timberlake , Jim Belushi , Juno Temple
• Director : Woody Allen
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Amazon Studios
• Genre : Drama
• Run time : 101 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic content including some sexuality, language and smoking
• Last updated : September 3, 2022

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

Watch CBS News

Review: Kate Winslet glows in Woody Allen's "Wonder Wheel"

By David Morgan

October 15, 2017 / 12:46 AM EDT / CBS News

Woody Allen's "Wonder Wheel," a romantic comedy-drama starring Kate Winslet as an adulterous woman in 1950s Coney Island, is the director's best film in years.

The movie, which had its world premiere Saturday at the New York Film Festival, has many of the familiar nostalgic trappings of a period Allen film, including starry-eyed characters with artistic aspirations who become embroiled with romantic misunderstandings.

But what the story hinges on is a moral dilemma that arises for Ginny (Winslet), a waitress, that fits squarely inside the emotional diorama that she has arranged for herself in the manner of Blanche DuBois -- a nexus of ambition, regret, infidelity, jealousy and fear.

Winslet's performance is a remarkably rounded depiction of a woman tortured by a cruel mistake in her past, for which she has only temporarily obtained rescue and redemption through cohabitation with her second husband, Humpty (Jim Belushi), a fellow recovering alcoholic who, like her, works on the boardwalk. Ginny is preoccupied by her son, a budding arsonist, and by her affair with a lifeguard and aspiring playwright, Mickey (Justin Timberlake).

But it's the arrival of Carolina (June Temple), Humpty's estranged daughter from his first marriage, which truly turns the household upside-down. After marrying a gangster several years earlier, causing a rift with her father, Carolina has since seen the error of her ways. But having sung to the FBI, this little canary is now a woman targeted by the mob, putting everyone in her family in jeopardy.

Compared to other recent Allen films -- "Cafe Society," "Irrational Man," "Magic in the Moonlight," "Blue Jasmine" and "To Rome With Love" -- "Wonder Wheel" shows a higher degree of diligence in his screenplay -- its dialogue and plot are less writerly and mannered. And for a story that is remarkably stagebound (this could easily be produced as a theatrical play, as hardly any scenes take place near surf), the look of the film is beautifully expansive, taking full advantage of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's evocative colors, Santo Loquasto's production design, and Suzy Benzinger's costumes. The glowing light that frames Winslet's face as she reveals the depth of her emotional needs, shifting colors as her moods shift, is both stirring and sad. 

The cast also brings a naturalism that is sometimes missing from the actors in Allen's films, given his propensity to lean on his absurdist humorist's touch in the realm of storytelling. (Some actors in his films, like Joaquin Phoenix in "Irrational Man," can blend realism and farce; others are less well-equipped.) Winslet is tops here, as is Belushi, who brings enormous empathy to the figure of a man trying to pull together his fractured psyche (and who feels responsible for his wife's as well).  Timberlake is believably untrustworthy in his pursuit of amorous attention. And Juno Temple is delicate in her dream of escaping the role of a gangster's wife and picking up her life where she left off.

And while "Wonder Wheel"'s story turns on plots twists that may be conveniently stretched here and there, it isn't predictable or overbearingly melodramatic when characters become trapped by the consequences of their actions. They're done in by serendipity, the universe's karma, and their own willful blindness, and that's quite dramatic enough.

"Wonder Wheel" (distributed by Amazon Studios) opens in theatres on December 1. 101 mins. Rated PG-13.

To watch a trailer for "Wonder Wheel" click on the video player below.

    For more info:

• 55th New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, New York (Sept. 28-Oct. 15) | Schedule | Tickets

       More New York Film Festival reviews: 

• "Last Flag Flying"
• "Before We Vanish"
• "The Square"
• "The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)"
• "Faces Places"
• "Call Me By Your Name"
• "Lady Bird"
• "BPM (Beats Per Minute)"
• "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"
• "The Rider"

David Morgan is a senior editor at CBSNews.com and cbssundaymorning.com.

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'Wonder Wheel' Review: Kate Winslet Elevates Woody Allen's Coney Island Melodrama| NYFF 2017

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Coney Island holds specific importance to Woody Allen . In Annie Hall , he posited that Alvie Singer, the director's protagonist and proxy, was raised below the area's famed beachside rollercoaster, which created literal instability to mirror the emotional instability he felt as a child. Right there, Allen connected his unfathomable neuroses and his own personal history as part and parcel with his need to entertain.

Allen returns to the oceanside community for an extended stay in his latest movie, Wonder Wheel , which features another family essentially living within the sprawl of rides, games, and restaurants that line the Coney Island boardwalk. Cloistered in a small apartment above a rifle game with the titular ferris wheel monopolizing the view from their front windows, Ginny and Humpty ( Kate Winslet and Jim Belushi ) have settled into a rhythm as a married couple, working small local jobs and raising Ginny's arsonist pre-adolescent son, Richie ( Jack Gore ). As Allen presents their lives following the return of Humpty's daughter, Carolina ( Juno Temple ), their day-to-day dramas are just as gaudy and theatrical as the mild pleasures one would get from the bumper cars or a game of whack-a-mole.

Wonder Wheel may in fact be Allen's most expressive and least subtle feature in at least a decade. It's built off a relatively simple premise -- Ginny and Carolina both fall for Mickey Rubin ( Justin Timberlake ), a lifeguard and the film's narrator -- but Allen cares less about the secrecy and sex of the situation than he does about the untamable desires that either guide his characters' lives or completely detonate them. Allen goes as far as to nearly literalize the rush of fiery desire and cold isolation of repression in purposefully discordant use of lighting. Eruptions of red, orange, and yellow overwhelm Winslet when Ginny's passions for Mickey or mere escape from her life with Humpty, and then those fiery reflections will quickly dissipate to icy blues, grays, and blacks.

Allen's style in Wonder Wheel is purposefully neither as seductive or fluid as it was in Cafe Society , Irrational Man , or Crisis in Six Scenes . There's no effort to romanticize the setting, the city, or the characters in his compositions, and it speaks to the infuriating stasis that Allen's characters are stuck in.  Much of the talk between Ginny, Mickey, Carolina, and Humpty pivots on past moments that were dictated by unrelenting passions or a severe fear of them, including Ginny's marriage to Richie's father, a jazz drummer, and Carolina's former marriage to a powerful mafia honcho. What Allen grasps firmly is just how unforgiving time and luck can be, and how easy it is to hurt or even kill someone when the indifference of those forces becomes too much to bear.

What he's missing is muscle. Part of the plot involves Carolina being stalked by a pair of toughs ( Tony Sirico and Steve Schirripa ) working for her ex-husband, who she informed on to the Feds. Other than the love triangle, that's all that holds the movie together and there's an anecdotal feel to the overall story. Wonder Wheel comes off as a complex moral parable, one that nonetheless lacks the emotional depth and symbolic audacity that render the messages of such stories so striking. He succeeds greatly in detailing the working neighborhood of Coney Island, or at least the area around the boardwalk, but there's purposefully little sense of the world outside of that. The characters feel cloistered but for no thoroughly convincing reason.

If it weren't for Winslet and, to a lesser extent, Belushi, the severe lack of emotional intensity and intimacy would make Wonder Wheel one of Allen's flimsiest outings. And yet, when Winslet must face her decision to put Carolina in danger in the name of romantic obsession, she imbues Allen's composition with a sense of radiating desperation and moral panic, inner pain and regret that rages like hellfire. Belushi, who is having a bit of a year between this and Twin Peaks , has the natural bearing and attitude of a lummox, which he plays up but also makes moves to subvert. Far away from his abysmal TV work, the actor reveals a yearning for redemption in Humpty and a thorny thicket of emotional history to the cuckolded mechanic.

Temple and Timberlake do admirable work with their characters but Allen does not write young characters well, or at least not with the resonance and sense of confession that he gives his adult characters. He's an old man who has never had to answer fully for his actions, thanks largely to his wealth, celebrity, and overwhelming privilege. This is not the man you want writing your bookish, hunky lifeguard, even if that lifeguard is living in the 1950s. With Ginny and Humpty, however, unrelenting guilt and regret can be felt palpably in the language as much as Winslet and Belushi's physical performances. Their scenes, especially in the film's second half, are unshakeable. They are not the only reason that Wonder Wheel works but they evoke the lived-in feeling and emotional clarity that are at the heart of Allen's best films, like a rickety home amidst a roaring carnival.

Wonder Wheel will be released by Amazon Studios on December 1st.

• Justin Timberlake

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