I’m told that Kate Winslet isn’t the only one who delivers a grand-slam, award-worthy performance in Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel (Amazon, 12.1). Unexpected as it may sound, Jim Belushi scores strongly and sympathetically as Winslet’s schlubby-nice-guy husband who grapples with some kind of Chekhovian anguish when her waitress character, Ginny, takes up with Justin Timberlake‘s Mickey, a Brooklyn lifeguard.
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Has Jim Belushi scored with an Oscar-calibre supporting performance in Woody Allen’s Wonder Wheel? As Marcus Licinius Crassus said in Spartacus, “Time will solve that mystery.”
A tipster believes that Belushi’s turn will probably generate Best Supporting Actor talk after Wonder Wheel debuts at the New York Film Festival on 10.14. Which, of course, would constitute a huge career rebound for Belushi, who’s been steadily working since his ’80s and early ’90s heyday (Red Heat, Salvador, K-9, Thief, Curly Sue) but in an under-the-radar, off-the-grid fashion. Or at least the grid that I pay attention to.
If the talk turns out to be valid, Belushi will have a perfect Oscar-season narrative along with a much-admired performance — riding high in the ’80s, loses the big-screen mojo, quietly plugs away for the last 25 years, does pretty well on TV (including his According to Jim series from ’01 to ’09, as a co-lead in The Defenders, a comedy series with Dan Aykroyd in 2010 and ’11 + a recent four-episode role in Twin Peaks) and is now suddenly back in the big game as a possible Oscar contender at age 63.
How did Belushi happen to land the role? Why him and not any number of higher-profile character actors who were probably considered? Last summer Woody was quoted saying that he cast Belushi because he was “absolutely perfect for it.”
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Belushi as he appears in Wonder Wheel, as Kate Winslet’s cuckolded husband.
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