Review: Everywhere-at-once Woody Harrelson is perfectly cast in Daniel Clowes’ cranky comedy ‘Wilson’

“Wilson” asks, can a male middle-aged crank get a sentimental education? If you even care whether that’s possible, Craig Johnson’s film adaptation of Daniel Clowes’ 2010 graphic novel offers a reasonably amusing case study in how that might transpire. That’s thanks in good measure to the can’t-think-of-who-else casting of Woody Harrelson as the titular character, a shuffling, irritable, canine-loving loner with unearned confidence in his friend-making skills, and a curdled romanticism about the cards he’s been dealt in life.

This isn’t the same kind of sardonic disillusionment that Clowes memorably explored in his teen-outcast masterpiece “Ghost World,” the movie version of which burned with intelligence and clear-eyed satire about the road ahead for semi-proud, still-unformed weirdos. “Wilson” is the halfway-to-death version, albeit scored to frisky jazz and served up like an affectionate comedy.

His crabby eccentricity like a wine that’s corked, Wilson has lived, loved and lost, which has turned him into a (dog)walking id. He may be able to openly cry at the bedside of his dying father, which is touching, but he also profanely insults strangers he’s ostensibly interested in engaging in conversation, which suggests an unrecoverable — if truth-tellingly humorous — misanthropy.

×

Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern star in “Wilson,” in theaters March 24.

When his only friend moves away, an attempt to reconnect with a school chum goes awry, and he suffers fumbling stabs at female companionship (first with Lauren Weedman, then Margo Martindale), and then looks up ex-wife Pippi (Laura Dern), whom he discovers is waitressing to rebuild her life after a bad stretch.

A hoped-for blast from his romantic past turns into a dream of the future, though, when Wilson learns that Pippi bore his child 17 years ago, and gave her up for adoption. Spurred by visions of finally becoming someone with a reason to look ahead — a father with a reunited family — Wilson embarks on an ill-advised campaign to find his daughter and ingratiate himself.

Tracking her down, with a wary Pippi in tow, to an upscale suburban mall, they discover an overweight, bespectacled and bullied goth girl named Claire (Isabella Amara) whose cynical attitude — who else’s kid could she be? — briefly energizes Wilson’s paternal nature. But when he plans a road trip for this bound-by-genetics-only trio to visit Pippi’s judgmental sister (a juicily haughty Cheryl Hines), your flirting-with-disaster radar will surely go into overdrive, for good reason.

Johnson, who made the similarly harsh-yet-humorous “The Skeleton Twins,” has the good sense to know that with the right actor in the right role, directing is sometimes as straightforward as pointing the camera and getting out of the way. Harrelson, usually the perfect side dish alongside someone else’s entree, makes the most of his star turn.

He’s an appealingly physical, soulful wreck, skirting the outskirts of creepiness without ever losing the man’s deludedly optimistic sense of purpose. Dern, captivatingly fiery and exasperated, bounces off his flintiness expertly, as does Judy Greer as a sympathetic dog-sitter.

There’s no escaping the fact that Clowes, who adapted his own work, has his own patented mix of sour and sweet, and what “Wilson” offers is a kind of hard candy for adults. (Storied cinematographer Frederick Elmes provides the color, in this case hues not too bright yet not too dull.) What makes it not entirely satisfying, though, is the sense that you’ve seen this kind of gruff-but-wise humor before, and better, and not just in “Ghost World” — which was naturally fizzier and melancholic — but in any movie with a vulgar curmudgeon whose rumpledness gets a few caring presses with a warm iron. Clowes is too original a talent in the graphic novel realm for a movie adaptation of his to feel like just another strip on the comics page.

-------------

‘Wilson’

Rating: R for language throughout and some sexuality

Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes

Playing: In general release

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour »

calendar@latimes.com