Woody Charms but ‘Wilson’ Falls Flat (FILM REVIEW)

[rating=6.00]

Though general consensus says that the best adaptations are the ones which remain truest to the source material, there are rare cases where this logic falls apart. These cases are few (Watchmen and every adaptation of The Great Gatsby spring immediately to mind) but they happen just enough to know that it’s a possibility. Which brings us to Wilson.

Based on the comic from Daniel Clowes, who also created Ghost World, Wilson is loyal to a fault, staying true to the source material to the detriment of the work. As a book, Wilson is wholly unlike any other graphic novel in that it’s composed of individual comic strips; you can read them in any order, really, or in no order in particular. The narrative is implied rather than spelled out, with much of the action, such as it is, taking place between the pages. The individual strips that comprise the work can take place days, weeks, months, or even years apart from what preceded it, creating a disjointed anti-narrative that takes us deep into the mind of the comic’s titular misanthrope.

That structure is kept somewhat intact here. The narrative it presents comes together as a string of scenes that never quite come together for the benefit of the larger whole. While individually the scenes are tight and effective, the end result is quite often tedious and never feels like it accomplishes all it set out to do.

Which isn’t to say the entire film is without its charms. Woody Harrelson is near perfect as Clowes’s awkward everyman, and he gives one of the best performances of his career. He seems to have an innate understanding of both the character and of the humor of the work. Wilson, technically, isn’t even a misanthrope. He’s an unrequited optimist. He lives his life in the hopes that somewhere, out there, humanity is meeting his standards of a good life, and it’s not his fault we keep failing him.

While this sets the stage for some amazing moments and some great scenes of awkward comedy as Wilson breaks every social norm we have in his quixotic quest for the perfect human to human exchange, it fails to hold itself up as the narrative evolves. Expanding on themes found in the comic, Wilson reunites with an estranged ex-wife (Laura Dern) from whom he discovers he’s the father of a child she put up for adoption (Isabella Amara). His attempts to find meaning in his life by forcing a familial connection fail spectacularly again and again, forcing Wilson to grow up without the benefit of a family to guide him.

The existential quandary facing Wilson is whether he needs to grow up at all. His is the kind of angst many of us face at around 30, when the realities of adulthood begin to get clearer as the fantasies of our 20s fade farther in the rearview. We probably all know someone like Wilson—hell, but for a few changes in my personal history, I could almost be Wilson—but what’s kind of cute at 30 is kind of sad at 50. That’s the point, of course. Wilson is a study in contented failure, and on a level it works.

It gets tiresome after a while, however. While the staccato pacing and disjointed narrative made for a groundbreaking comic, the attempts at imitating that cinematically quickly begin to wear on your patience, even while you laugh at Wilson’s increasingly obnoxious antics. In the end, it’s the reverence to the original work that brings Wilson down, though it’s hard to imagine another way they could’ve done it.

Perhaps, in its most pure form, Wilson would have been better served as a series of Mr. Bean-esque shorts. As it stands, the vignette style presentation tries too hard to squeeze narrative into the equation, which ultimately feels like more miss than hit. Still, with Clowes pulling duty as the screenwriter, the film does hit, and when it does it’s delightful. Perhaps not enough to please anyone but the most devout of Clowes’s devotees, but then again that’s where Clowes works best. Wilson might be vexing to the uninitiated, and perhaps disappointing to some of the ardent; that leaves the tiniest slivers of audiences who will walk away satisfied by the adaptation, and that might be all Clowes needs.

Wilson is now playing in theaters everywhere.

Related Content

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter