Story meanders, but the characters carry dark comedy
The whole of “Wilson,” a dark comedy about a curmudgeonly hermit who tries to reconnect with the world, isn’t quite as good as its parts.
The film offers ample laughs and fun characters to keep viewers engaged; together, though, they don’t form an emotionally satisfying story.
Woody Harrelson plays Wilson, an unfiltered loner who invades others’ personal spaces and offers pointed critiques of contemporary society, whether he’s with an unsuspecting dog-walker or the user of a nearby urinal.
Viewers won’t necessarily buy that his victims would stick around long enough for him to utter more than a few syllables, but we laugh anyway because Harrelson maximizes those moments.
Wilson’s main company is his terrier, Pepper (even the dog is good in the well-cast film), although Pepper can’t lend enough emotional support when Wilson runs into some bad luck.
First, his purported best bud, egged on by his acerbic wife (Mary Lynn Rajskub), moves away. Then Wilson’s father dies of cancer, and our hapless antihero decides to join the human race again.
The next sequences provide the film’s best part, as Wilson looks up an old friend (David Warshofsky) whose gruff disposition makes Wilson seem like Elly May Clampett.
The laughs continue when Wilson — with the help of social media, which he abhors — tracks down his ex-wife, Pippi (Laura Dern), R (for language throughout and some sexuality) 1:34 at the Lennox 24 and Gateway theaters
who is hardly pleased when Wilson, at her workplace, mentions her past battles with crack.
Harrelson and Dern are a hoot together; they make us believe that Wilson and Pippi could have been husband and wife.
Slowly but surely, though, the movie marches toward the implausible when Pippi reveals that Wilson is actually a father, at which point he begins to search for the girl — given up for adoption by Pippi — to help give his life greater meaning.
Director Craig Johnson and screenwriter Daniel Clowes (author of “Ghost World”) try to balance the biting humor with the more sentimental father-daughter story, with mixed results. The laugh-out-loud factor — along with Dern’s presence — begins to decrease, and Wilson’s ultimate change from a misanthrope to a happy human doesn’t ring completely true.
On the plus side, “Wilson” never gets boring, even as we scratch our heads during unconvincing set-pieces involving a prison, a reunion with a pet-sitter (Judy Greer) who seems too good to be true and a clunky visit to the family home of Wilson’s daughter.
It’s hard to dislike a film in which virtually every character, no matter how small the part, adds something.