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Reviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
WONDERFUL WORLD Ben Singer (Matthew Broderick) used to play guitar songs for children, but at some point his career ended. He’s now a proofreader, an office drone, divorced with a daughter he sees on the weekends. He lives with a roommate, Ibou (the impressive and charming Michael Kenneth Williams) from Senegal, who always imparts a few words of wisdom when they play chess. Cynical and untrusting of the world around him, Ben’s fine with shutting himself out and imparting such downtrodden spirits to his daughter. (After reading a fairy tale to her, he laments, “You never see any janitors in those stories, do you?”) Trouble in his sullen paradise comes when his roommate falls into a diabetic coma. Ibou’s sister, Khadi (Sanaa Lathan), arrives from Dakar, and in the meanwhile, as Ibou’s in a deep sleep, she stays in Ben’s one-bedroom apartment. So it goes. Ben falls for her sincere kindness and earthy sensuality, and little by little he opens up from his closed-off state and wonders if there could be a future with this woman or with his old music career. Wonderful World, the debut from Josh Goldin, is like a middle-class approach to Ramin Bahrani’s first film, Man Push Cart: a man tries his best not to look back on his past career of success but to live his life day by day, only to face the question, what is he doing with his life? One may also find an obvious comparison with 2008’s The Visitor, also about an average white suburbanite connecting with a foreign traveler, with his eyes opened, humanity revealed, etc. Bahrani dealt with his story his own way as a neo-realist. Goldin takes his own path, which is safer and a little more predictable and lighter. We can guess with some level of certainty how the relationship between Ben and Khadi will go, since they really are from different worlds. Goldin’s heart is in the right place, but I didn’t really connect with Matthew Broderick in the role of Ben, which is strange. Broderick is a fine actor, and he usually brings a character down to earth, but his misanthropy doesn’t come off as genuine, and his transformation by the film’s end—emphasized by a trip to Africa and connecting with a moment of “magic” during a downpour of rain—seems telegraphed by the script. A scene
where his daughter learns a Senegalese dance from Khadi is charming and
filled with genuine warmth. And yet I wondered if, during the course of
making the film, Goldin had leaned
towards making a satiric point or two, and then settled on turning the
film into a romance (or, sigh) a sub-par romantic-comedy. As a result,
Wonderful World is like one of Ben’s kiddie songs—just pleasant enough.
Jack Gattanella
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