NEXT STOP WONDERLAND (Miramax) Starring: Hope Davis, Alan Gelfant, Cara Buono, Jose Zuniga, Holland Taylor. Screenplay: Brad Anderson and Lyn Vaus. Producer: Mitchell B. Robbins. Director: Brad Anderson. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 99 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
"I don't believe in fate," says Erin Castleton (Hope Davis), the wistful heroine looking for love in NEXT STOP WONDERLAND, but _someone_ calling the shots on contemporary romantic comedy sure does. SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE became a huge hit introducing two destined lovers who only meet in the film's final scene; a few years later, 'TIL THERE WAS YOU also told a tale of lovers-to-be leading parallel lives until the closing credits start to roll. Earlier this year, SLIDING DOORS offered yet another speculative stab at how and why we meet our soulmates. Something in the zeitgeist has film-makers falling over themselves to convince us that Mr. or Ms. Right is out there, somewhere, just waiting for us to go to the right party or step on the right elevator.
NEXT STOP WONDERLAND falls into that category, but only in the most nominal sense. It does follow the never-quite-converging lives of two discontented singles, these two in contemporary Boston. Erin is a nurse in the middle of the latest of a series of serial break-ups with her activist boyfriend (Philip Seymour Hoffman); Alan Monteiro (Alan Gelfant) is a 35-year-old former plumber trying to break with his working class background and become a marine biologist. The narrative follows each of them on the trials and tribulations of their respective lives, Erin dealing with responses to a personal ad placed for her by her mother (Holland Taylor), Alan fending off the advances of a fellow student (Cara Buono) while trying to avoid the wrath of his loan shark Frank (Victor Argo).
The reason NEXT STOP WONDERLAND never feels exactly like a fated romance is that it feels so grounded in the simple reality of its protagonist. Hope Davis is an irresistable presence as Erin, a wannabe cynic whose romanticism bursts through in her love of her late father's poetry. It's as complete a female characterization as we've seen this year -- she's smart, clever, just vulnerable enough that you feel for her, just tough enough that you trust her. And it doesn't hurt that she anchors the best set-up in the script by Brad Anderson and Lyn Vaus, with a string of would-be suitors, each more unappealing than the last, leaving hilarious messages on the personal ad's phone line. Anderson directs with a 1990s Woody Allen vibe, complete with jump edits and hand-held camera work, yet the film never comes off as derivative of either the Allen oeuvre or other SLEEPLESS-style comedies. A character who grabs your interest can do that for a story.
NEXT STOP WONDERLAND is always Erin's story, which makes Alan's half of the film a very long introduction to "the other guy." Gelfant is appealing in a low-key way, but he never gets the audience as emotionally invested in Alan's hopes and dreams as Davis does in Erin's. He also has to contend with a silly sub-plot involving a shady real estate developer (Robert Klein) with an axe to grind against the aquarium where Alan volunteers. The time wasted on Alan kidnapping a balloonfish and dealing with the buffoonish Frank could have been used to develop a relationship between Alan and his father, who casts a long shadow on Alan's aspirations. Everything involving Alan is secondary to everything involving Erin.
The odd fringe benefit of this imbalance is that it takes the focus off the question that dogged other films employing this gimmick: why should we think these two people belong together? Our concern rests squarely with Erin; we want her to be happy, whether that's with Alan, the Brazilian charmer (Jose Zuniga) who catches her fancy, or even alone. The coda which has been added since the film screened at the Sundance Film Festival makes that concern even more central. The ending is no longer happy just because these two people meet, but because it looks like they could be happy together, and Davis's delightful performance invests us in her happiness. NEXT STOP WONDERLAND is a sweet and entertaining fairy tale not just because she finds Prince Charming, but because the one fate we care about -- Erin's fate -- is the only one the film is realy concerned with.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 small wonders: 7.
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