Wilson in 200 Words or Less

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Lord knows (as do y'all) that I'm biased in the direction of Laura Dern, so I felt a little guilty about only feeling invested in Wilson - the latest Daniel Clowes adaptation, starring Woody Harrelson as one of the writer's abrasive above-it-all malcontents - when she was on-screen. Dern plays Wilson's ex-girlfriend whose abortion he finds out after many years was actually an adoption, and the plot has the two of them go looking for (read: stalking) their biological seed. 

But the thing is I like Woody Harrelson, I like him a lot, so I don't think that was it. I think what it is is the character of Wilson is just such a pile of poke-in-the-eye eccentricities that the movie only works when it's explicitly exhausted by him, and Dern, channeling some of that ol' Enlightened exasperation magic, manages to simultaneously be exhausted and, magically, charmed all at once. I don't know how she does it, but the wellspring of conflicting emotions she packs into their scenes together is an ocean. The movie (like all movies) aches for her when she's not there.

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