Wonderful World

Wonderful World, starring Matthew broderick, tries too hard to be artful and gets bogged down in its own dreariness.

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Anyone know what Matthew Broderick's been up to since Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Apart from The Producers? No, me neither. The actor, now better known as Sarah Jessica Parker's husband, has never quite been able to live up to the success of John Hughes's cult 1986 hit, in which he artfully feigns illness and skips school for the day. His fall from grace seems aptly reflected here in his character Ben, a washed up copywriter and a miserable central character if ever there was one. Having enjoyed brief success as a children's entertainer, he has spent the last eight years in a dead-end job, sharing a cramped bedsit with his diabetic friend, Ibu (played by The Wire's Michael K Williams), and generally raging against the world. But when Ibu goes into a coma, and his flamboyant sister arrives at his bedside from Senegal, Ben is forcibly shaken out of his rut. Plenty of crackpot philosophy follows, including an oft-repeated theory about the power of thought and the sky's subsequent ability to rain fish (it does that in Senegal, apparently). As soon as they say it, you just know that at some point it's going to start raining fish. And thank goodness it does, because there is only so much baleful-looking Broderick (the adjective could have been invented for him) one can take. The film desperately strives for artfulness but instead gets bogged down in its own dreariness. One to avoid.