WONDER BOYS A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
If, as the saying goes, you're only as good as your last picture, then the pressure on "L.A. Confidential" director Curtis Hanson must have been enormous. That 1997 film was nominated for nine Academy Awards®--a tough act to follow indeed. Which might explain why Hanson has spent three years bringing his next project to the silver screen.
That project is "Wonder Boys," a film based on the novel by Michael Chabon and adapted by Steve Kloves ("The Fabulous Baker Boys"). Ironically (or not), its central character, cynical college professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), is also someone who has had to deal with high expectations. His first novel was a runaway best-seller, but that was seven years ago now and the promising author's follow-up is, even at 2,500+ single-spaced pages, far from finished.
To top it all, Grady's wife has chosen to walk out on him (again) on the same exact morning that his editor, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey, Jr.), is flying into town to find out what's going on with Grady's latest work-in-progress. "It's pretty much finished," lies Grady when asked about the status of his manuscript. "I just need to tinker with it a bit."
"Did he ask you about the book?" asks Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand), Chancellor of the Pittsburgh university where Grady works, wife of the English department chairman, to whom Grady reports, and Grady's mistress, currently with child. Grady's child. "Yes." "Are you going to tell him?" "No."
You'd think Grady Tripp's life was complicated enough but in his English class there's a suicidal young writer called James Leer (Tobey Maguire) and a pretty young thing called Hannah Green (Katie Holmes) to whom Grady rents a room in his house. And faster than an exasperated Grady can say "Well, you could have just pulled him off me!" there's also the Gaskell's now-deceased dog to contend with, two bullets to the midriff courtesy James' "cap" gun.
Douglas dominates the film with this kind of sardonic humor and the support provided by Maguire, McDormand, Holmes, and Downey, Jr. (especially) is second to none. Unfortunately, these engaging performances do not make for a completely satisfactory whole: "Wonder Boys" is a scattershot affair that bobbles along episodically but doesn't quite gel. Although undeniably funny, the film is often times extremely bleak in its tone and in its delivery: these are people who have difficulty connecting and no amount of pat Hollywood ending--wonder boy gets wonder girl--can eliminate that.
The trailer for this film is wonderful and Hanson would have done well to have employed the talents of the individual(s) who pieced it together. For all of its pacing problems, however, "Wonder Boys" is still worth seeing for Douglas' controlled and highly entertaining performance as Grady Tripp.
The only remaining question is whether three years was too much time, or too little, for Hanson to take making it.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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