Wonderful World Lives Up to Its Title
Former children’s folk singer Ben Singer (Matthew Broderick) isn’t a particularly happy man. Working a dead end job for the past eight years, he lives in a small studio apartment which he shares with Senegal immigrant Ibu (Michael K. Williams) the only man alive he openly considers a friend. Once a week he spends time with his daughter Sandra (Jodelle Ferland) but his morose outlook is starting to make these outings intolerable, the girl wanting to speak with her dad about her life but unsure if he’s even interested.
Matthew Broderick in Magnolia Pictures' Wonderful World
After Ibu falls ill ending up in the hospital in a coma Ben manages to contact his friend’s sister Khadi (Sanaa Lathan) in Senegal, the woman rushing to the United State to be by her brother’s side. Moving in to the small apartment, the former musician begins to open up the woman in ways he hasn’t in years, their relationship reopening his eyes to the world in ways a little less pessimistic. But that progress comes to a sudden halt when Ben misinterprets an overheard conversation, and if he’s not careful any chance he has at a life devoid of pain and misery will be as miniscule as his once thriving music career.
Quiet, character-driven and somewhat profound, writer and director Joshua Goldin’s (who once upon a time co-wrote Sam Raimi’s Darkman) debut effort behind the camera Wonderful World is a refreshingly honest and emotional drama that’s very easy to like. While the main character is a darkly morbid individual apparently at war with the world, through the people around him he begins to see things in a different light, the building emotions bubbling inside of him ones just about everyone can relate to.
Not that very much happens here that I didn’t expect. In many ways Goldin is following The Visitor playbook, a tired and depressed Caucasian having his eyes opened thanks to that care and nurturing of some friends coming from across the sea. It all feels very familiar, and even Ben’s arguments with his ex-wife Eliza (Ally Walker) almost feel as if they were lifted from similar motion pictures.
Yet the movie works, sometimes beautifully. Broderick is quite strong in the lead, refusing to make Ben likeable are fall into cliché dong his best to keep the audience at arm’s length as long as possible. Williams exudes warmth and charm, while Lathan is sublime as the woman who awakens her new roommate back to the possibility of love.
But then everyone here is good, Goldin getting solid performances from all his actors no matter how big or small the character they’re playing. The entire cast looks as if they are completely at home within the confines of this film, and even when things twist into the realm of the surreal the director manages to achieve a documentary-like quality that somehow balances everything out.
And when I say surreal I mean it. Ben has marijuana-fueled periods of hallucination that result in brief conversations with The Man (a perfectly cast Philip Baker Hall), the two discussing the economic realities as the former sees them keeping him from being a success. There is also a bizarre subplot involving a lawsuit for depraved indifference, the lawyers for the city all sharing an uncanny resemblance making these scenes almost feel as if they’re part of some strangely depressive alternate reality.
These are all good things, the film having a slightly off-kilter feel that’s somewhat unique. More than that, Goldin’s debut is ultimately exceedingly hopeful, and even when things go horribly wrong or don’t quite go in the direction a viewer would like them to the feeling goodness will prevail never disappears. In many ways Wonderful World expresses an idealism grounded in of all things cynicism, the triumph of one over the other the main reason the picture ended up speaking to me with such idyllic sincerity.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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