Wonderful World Blu-ray offers solid video and audio in this enjoyable Blu-ray release
Ben Singer is a failed children’s folk singer, a career proofreader, a less-than-extraordinary weekend dad, and perhaps the most negative man alive. Floundering in all aspects of his life, Ben’s only comfort comes from the regular chess games and friendly debates on game theory with his Senegalese roommate Ibou. When Ibou is suddenly struck ill, Ben’s pessimistic worldview seems unequivocally confirmed. It takes an extended visit from Ibou’s sister Khadi for Ben to realize that cynicism may be all a matter of perspective.
The Man is a ball buster and a back breaker. From the balcony of his penthouse suite in a steel and
glass tower, he throws bricks of misfortune down at schmucks like us, cackling all the while like an
overweight oil baron and smoking a cigar made of $100 bills. We're the replaceable cogs in his
corporate machine, the serfs in his feudal consumerist kingdom. His grip on us is like a Chinese
finger trap—the more we struggle, the tighter it gets. He's a white-collar pickpocket, a black-suited
extortionist, and we're all basically paying with our lives for the honor of shining his $3,000 patent
leather shoes. To belabor the point with one more metaphor, The Man has our souls to his
grindstone, and he's…slowly…wearing…us…down. That's one view, anyway. The other would be that
The Man is just a scapegoat, an excuse for our unhappiness and lack of ambition, a made-up
justification for our regrets, the falsified pretext for our tar-black cynicism. Wonderful World,
a little redemption fable of a film by first-time director Joshua Goldin, is all about examining both
sides of the coin. Even the title is a kind of litmus test. Is it Wonderful World, or
"Wonderful" World?
Black vs. White. Obviously, I mean the chess game.
Matthew Broderick plays Ben Singer, a perhaps too aptly named former children's folk singer who
put away his guitar for good eight years ago after his record company royally screwed him over.
Since then, he's been slumming through a dead-end job as a legal proofreader—"At least I don't
delude myself with hopes and dreams," he says, too tired to sneer—and he's developed a
ceaselessly misanthropic attitude. He's the very definition of a sad sack, an embittered ex-artist
who had his passion squelched by a culture of corporate greed. At night, his brain fogged with
marijuana smoke, he carries on Socratic, hallucinated conversations with The Man himself,
personified here by Philip Baker Hall. Ben is divorced from his wife, he rarely sees his precocious
young daughter (Jodelle Ferland), and his only real friend is his roommate Ibou (The
Wire's Michael K. Williams), a dangerously diabetic Senegalese immigrant. When Ibou falls
into a coma because Ben can't get him to the hospital on time—conveniently for the plot, a city
tow truck hauls Ben's car away right when Ibou starts to feel faint—his sister Khadi (Sanaa
Lathan) arrives from Africa to pull the dark-tinted glasses off of Ben's worldview. What follows is a
jumble of romance and misread intentions, as Ben grapples with his own cynicism even as he
begins to fall in love.
For all of Ben's weary sarcasm and defeatist quips, Wonderful World is an almost painfully
earnest film, the kind of well-intentioned indie drama that isn't out to make a buck or garner
awards, but rather, seems content to tell its small story with a totally unassuming tone. No
matter what its faults may be—and we'll get to those in a second—this isn't the sort of film that
you can endlessly rag on or passionately hate. It's like that super friendly but ultimately
uninteresting guy who lived on your floor in college, the one whose name you can't remember.
He might not have been the kind of person you'd necessarily want to be friends with, but he was
impossible to dislike. That's Wonderful World, a good-natured low-budget film that
doesn't quite accomplish what it sets out to do, but tries with such honest modesty that its
failures seem almost gracious. The main malfunction here is director Joshua Goldin's
scatterbrained script, which lunges off on narrative tangents but often double back before taking
them to gratifying conclusions. Case in point, Ben's lawsuit against the city for "depraved
indifference," a sequence that garbs itself in such flamboyant courtroom clichés that it almost
seems self-parodying. Even Ben's railings against The Man, consumerism, and the power of
positive thinking sound tired, not because of the lie down and die point he's trying to
make, but because we've heard it all before. At its best, Wonderful World is tender and
mildly triumphant, but at its worst—in Ben's conversations with The Man, for instance—it's baldly
didactic, preachier than a Sunday sermon.
The plot also swings on a worn-out thematic hinge. How many times have we seen a white
Westerner find redemption with the help of a soulful African who's monetarily poor but rich in
spirit? When played too pointedly, as it is here, the trope comes off as more than a little
condescending, a narrative leftover of post-colonialist guilt. But I don't think that's director
Joshua Goldin's intent. He really does find simple, unadulterated joy in Khadi shaking her hips in a
sensuous Senegalese dance or fixing Ben a meal of Wolof soul food. The relationship that
develops between the two is never entirely convincing, but you do get an insuppressible
satisfaction in seeing Ben finally crack a smile, the structural integrity of his self-imposed fortress
of solitude compromised at last. Broderick is nicely cast here—his baby face covered in a five
o'clock shadow of complete social indifference—and he manages to find that balance of being just
flawed enough as a character to need redemption, but not so unlikable as not to deserve it. His
fellow cast members do what they can—Sanaa Lathan alternately glows and glowers, and Michael
K. Williams plays Ibou as both wise and naïve—but the affected accents and the clumsiness of the
dialogue certainly don't work in anyone's favor. The film falters under stereotypes and a message
that's a little too obvious, but it's hard to be too cynical about Wonderful World.
Wonderful World looks true to its low-budget origins on Blu-ray, though the film's
1080p/AVC-encoded image does appear somewhat older than you'd expect from a 2009 production.
Not quite sharp, but not totally soft, the print has a lived in look that's a bit messy at times, with
small black specks of debris coming and going throughout the film. There are a few moments of
expressive clarity—see the threading of Ibou's sweater, for instance—but even in the tightest close-
ups, truly fine detail seems to be lacking. Colors are strictly realistic, with a predominance of browns,
beiges, and other neutral tones, and while the image lacks intensity—contrast could be a hair
tighter—this seems to be the result of intentional and/or budgetary restrictions. Black levels seem
slightly hazy at times, and if you look closely you'll notice that this is due to blue flecks of chroma
noise hovering over the darker parts of the image. That said, the film's grain structure is warm and
intact, and doesn't ever vary distractingly between scenes. Likewise, there are no overt technical
anomalies. Wonderful World certainly isn't a stunner in 1080p, but minus the dirt on the
print here, this is probably the best the film is going to look.
As expected from a low-key indie drama/romance/comedy (dram-rom-com?), Wonderful
World's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is laid-back and unpresumptuous. The mix is
decidedly front-heavy. While for long stretches of the film my surround speakers were as mute as
the ancient statues on Easter Island, some quiet but appreciable ambience does leak out from time
to time, like the chatter in the comedy club or the thunder and rain at the end of the film. The
music also bleeds into the rears, the pounding Senegalese drums sounding best, and the more
western music sounding, well, kind of dippy. The picked and strummed strings of Ben's guitar have
definite presence, with a tone that's both full and bright. Ibou's Wolof accent can get a bit thick at
times, making his faster-spoken lines a little difficult to make out, but otherwise the dialogue is
nicely balanced in the mix and easy to understand.
As Soon as Fish Fall Out of the Sky: Character and Story of Wonderful World (SD,
4:32)
In this brief segment, Matthew Broderick, Michael Kenneth Williams, Phillip Baker Hall, and Sanaa
Lathan discuss their characters and the general arc of the plot.
Behind the Scenes: Working with Writer/Director Josh Goldin and Actor Matthew Broderick
(SD, 1:30)
The other actors dole out a few pleasantries about working with Goldin and Broderick.
Behind the Scenes Montage (SD, 1:28)
Exactly what it sounds like: a montage of on-set b-roll footage.
HDNet: A Look at Wonderful World (1080i, 4:41)
A standard HDNet promo, featuring writer/director Josh Goldin, who explains the origins of the
project, and Matthew Broderick, who gives a brief plot synopsis.
Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment Blu-ray (1080p, 6:19)
Includes trailers for Red Cliff, District 13: Ultimatum, and The Warlords,
as well as a promo for HDNet.
Wonderful World means well, and that definitely counts for something, but the film's
execution never quite matches its ambitions. It may be worth a purchase for Matthew Broderick's
most ardent followers, but for everyone else I'd suggest a rental at most.
Magnolia Home Entertainment has announced and detailed Wonderful World, scheduled for Blu-ray release on March 16. This drama stars Matthew Broderick as perhaps the most negative man alive who realizes that cynicism may be all a matter of perspective. It got a ...
