Review of Wonder Wheel

I saw this film on a flight and, wanting to skip the intro, I skipped too much and completely missed the director's credits - I only learn now, here on imdb, that it is Allen. I found "Wonder Wheel" fascinating and, in hindsight, knowing it's Woody Allen, I applud its restrained use of the narrative voice-over - too many Allen films seem to all voice-over, to the point of making us suspect that he never finished writing the dialogue (which is often poor in Allen's film, but"Wonder Wheel" escapes that, too). The film has a kind of Tennessee Williams feel to it; most of the action takes place in one room, but to an even greater extent, Allen must have been inspired by Lillian Hellman's 1960 play "Toys in the Attic" in which two middle-aged spinsters cause disaster when trying to 'save' their younger brother from the woman he loves. In "Wonder Wheel", however, the ultimate tragedy is only subtly hinted at, and the main character's tragic flaw is not, as in the Hellman play, a direct betrayal but more like a sin of omission. So if Allen was inspired by the Hellman play, as I suspect, he has given the material a clever work-over.