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Wonder Boys


Wonder Boys
With Curtis Hanson in the director's chair and the always reliable Michael Douglas in front of the camera, a quirky and often brilliant comedy-drama called Wonder Boys becomes appointment viewing for the discriminating filmgoer.

This 2000 character study focuses on one Grady Tripp (Douglas), a pot-smoking college professor and writer who seems to be suffering from writer's block. As this chapter in Grady's life is laid before us, Grady's third wife has just left him, he finds himself drawn to a particularly gifted student named James Leer (Tobey Maguire) whose emotional luggage manifests itself in James shooting the chancellor's husband dog and stealing a valuable piece of movie memorabilia from his house. Grady also has a pretty student (Katie Holmes) renting a room from him who clearly has a crush on him, despite the fact that Grady is having an affair with the chancellor (Frances McDormand) and has gotten her pregnant.

Steve Kloves' screenplay, based on a novel by Michael Chabon, has a real Joel and Ethan Cohen quality to it, rich with a lot of quirky but likable characters doing not very nice things and caught in the middle of some very prickly situations that they could get out of quite easily, but often just choose not to. Everything that is going on in Grady Tripp's life seems to be contributing to his writer's block and his desire to ignore everything that isn't right in his life right now.

Even the writer's block that Tripp is suffering from is not what we usually think of as writer's block. Instead of being unable to write anything, poor Grady is unable to stop writing, made only worse by the fact that he really doesn't even know what he's writing. The original idea for a 250-300 page is now over 2600 pages and continues to be churned out. There's a point in the film where Grady explains to us that he has to block out everything that's going on in his life and work on his book and he sits down and starts typing instantly without even thinking about what he's typing. There's a slightly confusing connection between some of the characters in Grady and the nonsensical epic he can't shape into a viable piece of literature, while people keep reminding him how brilliant his last book was.

Director Hanson looks at Grady Tripp with such a twisted directorial eye that we can't help love this guy and feel for everything he's going through. Hanson's vision of the character seems to find itself in Tripp's glasses, which come on and off his nose a LOT during the running time.

Michael Douglas offers a dazzling, award-calibre performance in the starring role that endears the character to us and he gets terrific support from Maguire, a real opener as the ethereal James Leer, Robert Downey Jr. as Tripp's publisher who comes to the canvas to pressure Tripp but becomes completely enamored of James instead, and especially McDormand as the married chancellor who loves loving Tripp but is being driven quietly insane with his ambivalence regarding their relationship. The film features terrific editing and an evocative song score that both serve this offbeat story perfectly.