Metacritic reviews

Winslet delivers her most powerful, emotionally resonant performance in more than a decade.

It would be going too far to say Wonder Wheel is an instant Woody Allen classic, but it’s a reminder that he’s still a force to be reckoned with and a great director of actresses especially.

It’s got movement and flow, it’s got a vibrant sunset look of honky-tonk nostalgia, and it’s got a bittersweet mood of lyrical despair that the film stays true to right up until the final note. It’s also strikingly acted.

This is an imperfect, if entirely beautiful, film.

Allen is too self-aware and cold a creative personality to create a genuine tragedy in Wonder Wheel. Instead, he makes a gesture towards a tragic situation.

The warming affection that the director has bestowed on so many of his best characters is largely missing. In fact, he seems barely engaged.

The tone throughout vacillates wildly from silly comedy to classic Hollywood melodrama, and all of it feels as artificial and unsatisfying as the cotton candy twirling in a vending cart.

Watching the rest of the movie, I wondered if Allen had discovered the script in an old file cabinet (maybe meant as a play?) and appended that meta intro to account for how obvious and old-hat the rest of it is. Probably a good strategy.

Winslet is doing an impression of Cate Blanchett doing an impression of Mia Farrow in September.

It’s by no means the worst of Allen’s later films (Cassandra’s Dream remains unrivaled in that department) and the flashes of brilliance from Winslet and stunning visuals do lift it but there’s an overwhelming, existential pointlessness to it all.