There's nothing quite so "exhilarating" than watching a sometimes mild, sometimes hot tempered average NY suburban Joe spend an excess of a hundred minutes on screen narrating us his thoughts, all the while receding from society and his own family in an attic of his garage, adjacent to the house where he's left his wife (Jennifer Garner, who admirably does so much with so little material here) and daughters to wonder just what's become of him. Wakefield, a film by Robin Swicord, is apparently based on a short story by E.L. Doctorow, and having watched the film it spawned, I can only wonder as to why anyone thought it would make an effective feature.
Bryan Cranston plays the titular weirdo, who spends about 80% of the film's running time in voice over (I'm sure that Adaptation's Robert McKee would have a field day with it), all the while eating out of garbage cans during night and day and hiding from everyone he knows because... well, I guess he's just fed up of being taken for granted (damn you, inconsiderate society!). Cranston is too talented an actor for such a one-dimensional role, and his Wakefield turns out to be a great bore - not only to himself, but to the viewer as well.
And to make matters even worse, the audience, which had suffered throughout observing the lonely, mundane existence of this cowardly prick, is deprived the pay-off moment of him finally appearing before his family after months of exile, as the film cheaply cuts to black before we could see their reaction. Wakefield is not at all the profound movie it thinks it is, but confused and unfulfilled mess about a man who, once he decided to disappear, should've stayed gone for good.
C-
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