A Curmudgeonly Know-It-All Meets The Daughter He Doesn't: 'Wilson'
Director Craig Johnson's film, based on the Daniel Clowes graphic novel, wants us to invest in a misanthrope's grumbling attempts to reconnect to humanity. Yet its uneven tone keeps us at a distance.
The namesake of Wilson is the kind of guy people try to avoid on the bus, at the sidewalk cafe, or while using the adjacent urinal. Yet the makers of this deadpan comedy want us to spend 90 minutes with him.
The experience isn't painful, but it is a little frustrating. Playing the reclusive, misanthropic, yet oddly gregarious title struggles with tone, shifting from monotonously bleak to predictably satirical to improbably sanguine.
