Wilson, screenplay by Daniel Clowes, based on his novel

Wilson, screenplay by Daniel Clowes, based on his novel

Wilson is a very charming, amusing, entertaining, sensitive, endearing motion picture that was alas generally dismissed.

The tremendous personality of the ebullient Woody Harrelson can carry any film; we have seen what his performances can bring to a feature in The People vs Larry Flynt, No Country for Old Men, Anger Management, the thin Red Line and so many more.

Woody Harrelson has demonstrated that he can play anything, LBJ, a president, porn magazine tycoon, a mean character in one War for the Planet of the Apes, but the eccentric characters are just normal for him.

In Wilson, the spectacular actor plays the outré personage from the title, who seems to have turned off the public so far, who have only given the motion picture 5.8 on IMDB and critics who rated it at 49.

Nevertheless there are so many scenes that audiences can enjoy, starting with the one on the train, where Wilson enters a rather empty train car, instead of sitting on one of the over a hundred seats available where he does not disturb anyone, he opts instead to get next to man who may be sleeping, with his earphones attached, nudge the traveler and start asking about what he does.

The hero, when he learns that the man works in a technology company, with his always-charming smile, says something like CQ/bbq and then adds that people work for oligarchs, without the approval of the stranger who says that he actually enjoys what he is doing.

Wilson meets someone else, a woman who looks at the price for a pet toy and is scandalized with the $ 10 cost, the protagonist agrees with her and then mentions that he needs to meet more people, which he tries to do by intentionally hitting the woman’s car outside the shop and then asking for a date.

He then stops a taxi driver to ask where he can get some fun and when the interlocutor mentions strip clubs, the amusing character replies that strip clubs are for suckers and he wants what he appears to regard as the real thing, hookers, especially since he is looking for…his former wife, a woman that may be on the streets…it seems.

The hero meets one sex worker and asks about his former spouse, mentioning that her “nomme de guerre” could be Climax, or something similar, and when the woman says she does not know, the man settles for sex, even if he does not have his wallet.

After asking around, Wilson arrives at the restaurant where Pippi, played by Laura Dern, works and the two get together again for some time, the ex-wife informs the former husband that she gave birth to a girl that he offered for adoption, seventeen years ago, making the surprised, proud and amusing father want to find the daughter.

He first finds a strange detective and then takes Pippi to the residence of the girl, following her to the mall, where colleagues insult her, because she is overweight and they are discriminative and silly.

Wilson comes from hiding to attack those who aggravate his new found child, jumps on one and destroys some merchandise, getting acquainted with the teenager in the most peculiar way and it gets even more bizarre, as the father explains about the estrangement that took place seventeen years before and mentions the mother, who had no choice, as she was an addict on the street, comforting strangers.

After this first misfire, the father comes to drive Claire from school, talks about the bullying colleagues and says that even Copernicus must have been harassed at school, this is the fate of all good people, after this, to improve the mood of the teenager, he asks her about the person she hates most (Monika) and the most repelling teacher (Mr. Nesbit) and makes up a weird poem while driving-Monika blows Nesbit like a harmonica…

He has some serious thoughts on the fact that we are using all the resources of the earth and say to future generations fuck you, after which he talks to a man in the rest room, selecting the urinal next to the stranger, in the way he did on the train, avoiding all the other places, and they end up talking about children and how they grow and Wilson concludes that the other father is a wise man…the image is on the poster of the movie.

The biological parents take Claire for the weekend, without informing the adoptive family and the hero is all the way through charming, if in a strange manner, telling his sister in law that she looks good, but not in a “salacious” way, approves his daughter when she says fucking, mentioning the great DNA she has, gets arrested, sent to prison for 36 months, for kidnapping and endangering a minor.

In prison, Wilson starts on the wrong foot, when he sits next to a neo Nazi, with a swastika tattooed on his face and talks about it with jocularity- that is quite a statement there, you do not say you want the job there, you say you want to destroy society…after this, he is kicked down by the Nazi and his mate, only to engage in another dispute, in spite of his incredible equanimity and serenity, this time with a preacher, when the prisoner talks about the need to be brain damaged in order to believe in all that…so he is beaten again, this time by an admirer of Jesus.

Somehow, the love, compassion, shared joy that drives the hero prevails and he becomes friends with all his former enemies, meets with Pippi who tells him she is moving to Australia, with her sponsor from the addicts club and Wilson talks about his suffering caused by their daughter, who accused and testified against him at the trial.

When he is out of prison, this gentle, peaceful, kind, intelligent, awkward, perseverant, loving, humorous hero maintains the same joyful, blissful attitude and talks to a young man in a bus, joking about his release from prison, saying he will not cut his throat for cigarettes, showing him the book of God, which he then throws, stating that Jesus does not care!

If not all the scenes are exhilarating, many, maybe most are, in this often ecstatic film, due to the magnificent, glorious and mesmerizing Woody Harrelson.