Small Town Wisconsin
Wayne is having a bad day in the opening scene of Small Town Wisconsin, but then, every day is sort of bad for him. He mumbles angrily at the Brewers game on the radio of the garage where he labors; he sneaks a swig of beer behind the hood of the car he’s servicing; and his boss reminds him that he’s only hired for 20 hours a week. If Wayne (David Sullivan) works late to finish the job, “I ain’t paying you for it.”
The latest by Milwaukee-reared director Niels Mueller (The Assassination of Richard Nixon), Small Town Wisconsin is an accomplished film on all levels. Cinematography and editing are excellent; Jason Naczek’s screenplay tells stories and back stories succinctly without unnecessary exposition; the cast of familiar faces (stars from several television series) gives believable, fully realized performances. And it’s good to see Milwaukee actors in small roles, including a cameo by Flora Coker as Wayne’s trailer park neighbor. According to Mueller, several of the leads have Upper Midwest roots and came to the production familiar with the mental lay of the land.
The setting is recognizable from dozens and dozens of similar places in our region—it’s a two-story town of two lanes intersected by disused railroad crossings. The business district was once busier and many locals have wound up living in trailers. Wayne’s situation is quietly suffused with the pathos of social decline. He slips inside the old family home, long-since foreclosed, and continues to rehab the kitchen even though it will never be his again. He brings his 9-year old, Tyler (Cooper J. Friedman), and marks the boy’s age and height on the same doorjamb where his folks scratched the record of his childhood.
Tyler is the bone of custody contention with his exasperated ex-wife, Deidre (Tanya Fischer). The judge can only sympathize with her, given Wayne’s police record for disorderly conduct and DWI and the court-appointed psychiatrist’s diagnosis of alcoholism, anger and depression. The story line shows that all of those charges are true. Throwing caution and the judge’s order out the window, Wayne decides to travel with Tyler and his old buddy Chuck (Bill Heck) for a Brewers game in the big city, Milwaukee. As irresponsible as he is, Wayne has a good heart, selling his prized baseball card collection to pay for front row tickets and a night at the Pfister (“It’s where presidents stay!”).
Small Town Wisconsin wears its irony lightly. The humor in many scenes (Wayne manages to shatter his car window with an ill-tossed bowling ball) doesn’t obscure the underlying sadness of a life already in the rearview window by age 30. The local references are accurate and incorporated unostentatiously. Yes, those are Usinger’s brats on the grill, “ain’a?”
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