Review

Wilson

Dog sitter Shelly (Judy Greer) fi nds a fox terrier far more charming than the dud who owns it in Craig Johnson’s laconic comedy Wilson.
Dog sitter Shelly (Judy Greer) fi nds a fox terrier far more charming than the dud who owns it in Craig Johnson’s laconic comedy Wilson.

If director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins) were to chop up Wilson into 5- to 10-minute segments in random order and then post them to YouTube, the final result might seem like a comic masterpiece. As you might have noticed from the excerpts posted all over the web, individual scenes of the lonely middle-aged Wilson (Woody Harrelson) trying to connect with people and failing miserably are darkly hilarious. Wilson (we're not sure if it's his first or last name) is divorced, and it's surprising that he ever got married or even had a one-night stand. He starts conversations with strangers who don't really want to talk with anyone and certainly not him. He laments that too many of his fellow human beings are staring at screens and listening to whatever's on their earbuds to pay attention to one another.

His lament might carry some weight if his company were wanted or pleasant. But he bursts into obscenities, and the phrases he utters that are printable in a family newspaper are guaranteed to alienate anyone within hearing distance. (It has been my limited experience that women do not like being described as "hippos.")

Wilson

76 Cast: Woody Harrelson, Laura Dern, Judy Greer, Isabella Amara, Cheryl Hines, Bill McCallum, Margo Martindale, Mary Lynn Rajskub

Director: Craig Johnson

Rating: R, for language throughout and some sexuality

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Should younger men wish to learn how not to appeal to the opposite sex, they should observe how Wilson taps his front bumper against the rear of a woman's car as a pickup ploy.

It's no wonder Wilson always loses out to cellphone content. Harrelson manages to make Wilson just sympathetic enough to make viewers wonder what social calamity he'll leap into next. His comic timing makes the outbursts as funny as they are off-putting, and he seems just emotionally wounded enough to make one hope he can somehow get past his self-inflicted predicaments. Then again, nobody does well while dealing with a dying parent.

Screenwriter Daniel Clowes (Ghost World) comes up with plenty of choice torrents of profanity for Harrelson to bellow and gives Wilson some occasionally profound musings that the character (who seems unemployed and unemployable) proceeds to undermine with his own actions.

In Clowes' original graphic novel, Wilson's story is episodic and follows only the loosest of storylines. In print these vignettes follow a fine line between poignant and pathetic. By adapting the segments into a script, the story seems choppy and lacks some dynamics. Despite a series of comic catastrophes, Wilson never seems to grow or develop.

What there is of a plot involves his ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern) informing him that the two of them have a daughter she has given up for adoption. Having dealt with an addiction that's as debilitating as Wilson's lack of social skills, it's no wonder she outsourced the parenting of the now-teenage Claire (Isabella Amara) to others. Wilson then embarks on a quixotic mission to reunite his seemingly lost family. Of course, he fails to consult with her current parents and alienates Pippi's sister (Cheryl Hines) and brother-in-law (Bill McCallum).

Wilson is almost guaranteed to dig his own grave with a bulldozer, so there isn't much anticipation over how badly he'll come out in the end. Thanks to Harrelson and a committed supporting cast, Wilson's attempts to break through computer screens are amusing, but it would be easier to follow along on his mad quest if there were a sense that he could get past his marksman-like aim while shooting himself in the foot.

MovieStyle on 03/24/2017

Upcoming Events