'Wonder Wheel' resembles a hokey 1950s B-movie dredged from a dumpster behind the office of a backstreet film producer. The story tells how an ex-actress waitress cheats on her fairground carousel operator husband with a much younger Coney Island lifeguard. Their dismal affair has more desperation than delight, and it quickly spirals into a fiasco. The fallout eventually engulfs the woman's stepdaughter who is fleeing from a gangster spouse with his goons on her tail.
Woody Allen's screenplay has numerous references to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, presumably as some kind of tribute, but this tawdry melodrama ends up looking like an insulting parody. The fine cast struggle mightily with his dire screenwriting, which delivers a procession of narrative cliches and histrionic exchanges between the characters. In the end, they can only present an over-acting showcase. After this catastrophe, Amazon must have been ecstatic to wriggle out of their multi-film contract with Allen, thanks to his imbecilic self-serving comments about the Weinstein scandal.
Woody Allen's screenplay has numerous references to Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, presumably as some kind of tribute, but this tawdry melodrama ends up looking like an insulting parody. The fine cast struggle mightily with his dire screenwriting, which delivers a procession of narrative cliches and histrionic exchanges between the characters. In the end, they can only present an over-acting showcase. After this catastrophe, Amazon must have been ecstatic to wriggle out of their multi-film contract with Allen, thanks to his imbecilic self-serving comments about the Weinstein scandal.