I’m sorry but this still feels way too broad, too “aimed at the peons in the cheap seats.” Which is not the kind of film that Fox Searchlight releases as a rule. Which is all the more surprising from the minds of Daniel Clowes and director Craig Johnson (The Skeleton Twins), whom I respect. I like dry LQTM humor, like the kind that Noah Baumbach went for in Greenberg. Wilson (playing at Sundance, opening on 3.24) seems to have been made for Kevin James fans. Not my cup.

Posted last August: I’ve recently been developing a notion that Craig Johnson and Daniel Clowes‘ Wilson might be a smart, sardonic, character-driven, vaguely pissed-off movie that’s nonetheless “funny” in subdued, take-it-or-leave-it way.

On top of which it’s a father-daughter relationship movie that’s not Toni Erdmann. That in itself makes me feel favorably disposed. Because it’s not fucking Erdmann.

Based on Clowes’ graphic novel and set in Minnesota, Wilson might otherwise be described as a nice, downbeat-hipster fuck-you movie about “a confrontational misanthrope who desires a deep connection with other people, but whose aggressive interpersonal style thwarts such relationships.”

You have to presume it’s fairly good because Clowes wrote Ghost World and High School Confidential, and because Johnson directed The Skeleton Twins. Right?

Fox Searchlight copy: “Harrelson stars as Wilson, a lonely, neurotic and hilariously honest middle-aged misanthrope who reunites with his estranged wife (Dern) and gets a shot at happiness when he learns he has a teenage daughter (Amara) he has never met. In his uniquely outrageous and slightly twisted way, he sets out to connect with her.”