What’s happened to Matthew Broderick? Why is he stuck in the rut of playing joyless schnooks, like his character in the new film, “Wonderful World”?

I thought of this after I happened to catch “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” on TV recently, for the first time in ages. In that John Hughes film, Broderick seemed to be the life force incarnate: happy, mischievous, audacious, subversive yet sweet.

But in a string of films in recent years, Broderick has shrunk himself to a cowering kernel of humanity: playing characters defeated by life before they get out of bed in the morning. Not that he doesn’t still have a terrific sense of timing or a way with a one-liner – he regularly hits them out of the park in Peter Tolan’s underseen, bitterly funny gem “Finding Amanda,” and is the perfect fuzzy protagonist in Terry Kinney’s similarly underrated “Diminished Capacity.”

Yes, I know – in “Ferris Bueller,” Broderick was 24, playing 17. And in real life, even though he still has the same boyish face, he’s closing in on 50. And he seems to be stuck playing schlemiels.

In “Wonderful World,” his latest is Ben Singer, an unhappy proofreader who once was a rising star in the children’s music world. Now divorced, he shares his apartment with a Senegalese roommate named Ibou (Michael Kenneth Williams), spends an inordinate amount of time smoking pot and is a weekend dad whose sourness turns his daughter off.

Ben has, in fact, soured on the entire world. He’s convinced that life is a stacked deck – stacked against him, at least. He’s a man in a rut, unhappy and with no idea what he needs to turn his life around.

But when Ibou has an attack related to his diabetes – and Ben is foiled in his efforts to get him to the hospital because of the actions of a city employee – Ben finally finds a purpose to his life. While regularly visiting the comatose Ibou, Ben decides to take on City Hall – to be his own lawyer and bring an action for negligence on Ibou’s behalf.

Even as he does, he finds his apartment occupied by Ibou’s sister, Khadi (Sanaa Lathan), who has come from Senegal to help care for her brother. She provides the fresh set of eyes that help Ben reexamine his relationship with his daughter – and, more important, with himself.

Joshua Goldin’s directorial debut has its moments, but it’s all Broderick can do to give this character a pulse, let along bring him to life. The script feels slim at times, as though Goldin, lacking inspiration for actual witty lines, hoped that Broderick might bring some comedic spin to the wan dialogue.

Broderick and Lathan have uncomfortable chemistry, though Williams injects life in his brief scenes as Ibou. Broderick otherwise spends most of the movie looking pained. But a misanthrope without cutting quips is just a sourpuss – even if he’s one who regains a bit of pep in the end.

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