Movie Review – Remembering Gene Wilder
Principal Cast : Gene Wilder, Alan Alda, Robin Blankman, KAren Boyer, Mel Brooks, Harry Connick Jr, Burton Gilliam, Michael Gruskoff, Carol Kane, Ben Mankiewicz, Eric McCormack, Mike Medavoy, Zero Mostel, Nancy Nuefeld Callaway, Peter Ostrum Rochelle Pierce, Rain Pryor.
Synopsis: A special tribute documentary honouring Gene Wilder’s life and career.
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Arguably one of Hollywood’s greatest screen comics, certainly of the late 20th Century, this documentary offers a warm look into the life and career of Gene Wilder, the actor having passed away in 2016 and who starred in a variety of comedy classics including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, See No Evil Hear No Evil, and would become the defining madman of his generation as Willy Wonka in the poplar big-screen adaptation, Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, perhaps the role for which he’s best remembered by countless children for decades. Boasting interviews from Wilder’s family and friends, as well as a number of his on-screen colleagues, Remembering Gene Wilder offers a fairly bucolic documentary experience that essentially captures the madness and creative genius of the man via retrospective film history and anecdotes. Mel Brooks, perhaps his most august collaborative partner, is at his effusive best, while Wilder’s widow, Karen, offers a moving insight into his later years afflicted by Alzheimers.
The film doesn’t necessarily break new ground, nor does it cover every aspect of Wilder’s storied career, but it does touch on specific periods of his life most film fans will be familiar with – his partnership with Mel Brooks, romance and love with Gilda Radner, his incongruously scattered on-screen pairing with Richard Prior, and his turn as the eponymous Wonka, perhaps the key to his manic, wide-eyed energy dissected by the talking heads we’re privy too. Alan Alda, Harry Connick Jr, Carol Kane and Eric McCormack, as well as several others and a bunch of archival footage interviews, form a tapestry of a quiet man who loved his family, had a supremely comic mind and creative flair, and honour the legacy of Wilder’s screen career as a landmark in Hollywood’s storied history. I’m unsure how much you’ll get out of it if you’re not a fan, or haven’t seen any of his films, and even hardcore Wilder fans won’t find much new to mull over here, but if it’s a Hallmark documentary made with love, a touch of rapscallion wit and an absurd amount of care, Remembering Gene Wilder will see you wax nostalgic about the great man’s influence on both the genre and the industry, not to mention those with whom he came into contact.
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