Saturday Night At The Movies


Mopey white guy with guitar, Pt. 2

By Dennis Hartley













Wait a minute…didn’t I review this film LAST week?














Well, sorta.



Can blue men sing the whites?
Or are they hypocrites for singing woo, woo, whoo?
Oh Lord, somebody help me!
-The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band

There was a famous children’s radio show that ran on WOR in New York from the late 1920s through the late 1940s that became infamous when it was rumored that the host, Uncle Don Carney, had once signed off with his signature cheery goodbye to the kiddies, then (not realizing that his microphone was still “hot”) immediately wisecracked, “There! That oughta hold the little bastards!” I remember listening to it back in the 70s on an LP of legendary broadcasting bloopers compiled by Kermit Schaefer. I was disappointed to learn in later years that the gaffe was actually faked for the album (although most of the other cuts were genuine). Still, the enduring popularity of the urban legend says something about the twisted appeal of the subversive cynic hiding behind the clown face.

This concept has spawned a relatively small sub-genre of films that can probably be traced back to the 1957 Elia Kazan entry, A Face in the Crowd, in which Andy Griffith stars as a backwoods conman-turned media superstar whose vitriolic disdain for his public belies his image as a benignly goofy, “family-friendly” entertainer. Tony Richardson’s 1960 film adaptation of John Osborne’s cynical and scathing portrait of a fading vaudevillian (Laurence Olivier), The Entertainer also deserves a mention. More recent films like Bad Santa, Shakes the Clown and Death to Smoochy have toyed with the same theme. Wonderful World, the directorial debut from Joshua Goldin, fits right in.

“The only crime left in the fucking world is negative thinking,” laments Ben Singer (Matthew Broderick) who holds the worldview that everything is fixed, yuppies are the root of all evil, and we’re all doomed anyway so why bother. A failed children’s singer (his sole album long relegated to the dusty cutout bins of history), the divorced Ben now works a dead-end job as a proofreader. When one of his co-workers chastises him for not sharing in the congratulatory excitement surrounding the news that another co-worker (an aspiring actor) has just landed his first television acting gig, he dismisses the scold with a shrug and says “I don’t delude myself with hopes and dreams.” He’s a real piece of work.

Interestingly, however, he does have friends. He participates in a weekly after-hours jam session in the back room of a music store with a small group of pals, and proves to be a decent guitarist; it makes us wonder exactly why he’s squandering his talents. As the music store owner surreptitiously observes, “That’s a shame, to be good at something no one cares about…” (as a blogger, don’t I know THAT feeling). His roommate Ibu (Michael K. Williams) a Senegalese immigrant, doesn’t let Ben’s chronic glumness dampen his perpetually sunny disposition, and considers him to be a good friend regardless. Ben does approach a state approximating enjoyment when he spends time with his precocious 11-year old daughter (Jodelle Ferland); although his negative waves are markedly straining their relationship and becoming a source of concern to Ben’s ex-wife (Ally Walker). Ben seems quite happy to continue wallowing in his half-empty glass bubble of apathetic detachment, until a series of unexpected and personally challenging events shakes his world up, not the least of which arrives in the person of Ibu’s sister (Sanaa Lathan) a Senegalese national who shows up on his doorstep one fateful day.

While this is a somewhat familiar narrative (the self-pitying mope gets snapped out of his myopic torpor by the Free-Spirited Other), writer-director Goldin delivers it in a fresh and engaging manner. I was initially expecting the film to go in another direction (i.e. another black comedy about a bitter children’s entertainer); but was pleasantly surprised by the genuine warmth and humanity at its heart. Broderick gives a nicely nuanced performance that I would put up there with his work in Election. Newcomer Lathan does a lovely job, as does the surprising Williams, whose gentle and endearing character here couldn’t possibly be any farther from the ruthless and cold-blooded villain he played so memorably on the HBO series,The Wire. Not a major film, but a rewarding one. BTW-although it is in limited release, it is also available on PPV-so check your local listings.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Visitor
Whatever Works
Happy Go Lucky
The Maid
A Serious Man

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