Wonderful World

Matthew Broderick stars as Ben Singer, a an embittered civil servant whose marriage has failed, who is estranged from his only daughter, whose career is at a dead end and who blames corporate greed on the part of The Man (an amusing performance by Philip Baker Hall) as the origin of both his and all society's ills. Then his roommate (and only friend) enters a diabetic coma and Ben is forced to take stock of his life.

He's helped along by his roommate's sister, Khadi, who travels from Dakar to wait by her brother's bedside, and by a coworker who discovers that Ben was previously a very successful recording artist of children's songs until being put down by The Man.

Thankfully, Wonderful World is not as heavy-handed as it might have been, and Broderick brings a soft, sympathetic touch to Ben’s pessimistic nature. Writer-directer Joshua Goldin (who wrote Out on a Limb with Broderick and 1990’s Darkman) crafts a movie that blends comedy into a hopeful story about a man in search of the good things that life has to offer.