Wonder Boys (2000) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Robert Downey Jr. Directed by Curtis Hanson. Rated R.
Wonder Boys is a quirky little comedy, eccentric almost to the point of inaccessability. It succeeds as an unorthodox Michael Douglas vehicle -- this is his first un-Gordon-Gekko role since 1995 -- but it would have worked better if the writer tried less to be risque and harder to be funny. The movie is still a winner, in it's own breezy, lighthearted way but for director Curtis Hanson, made famous by the far more heavyweight L.A. Confidential, this is hardly something to write home about.
Douglas plays Grady Tripp a struggling writer and English professor who, in middle age, has descended into a world of his own. He teaches his classes almost in a trancelike state, smokes pot and works on his second novel -- his first, published decades ago, was a runaway hit. His new one is up to 2600 pages with no end in sight. But Grady doesn't care. He just keeps on writing in the hopes that maybe in the distant future, he'll be able to do something with it.
Meanwhile, Grady has an affair with the college's chancellor (Frances McDormand). He finds out that she is pregnant -- presumably with his baby. He seems too submerged inside his own mind to care or do anything about this development. His whole life seems to change in inexplicable ways, however, when a student named James Leer (Tobey Maguire) enters the scene. James is an aspiring writer who may or may not be good, a liar and an altogether difficult person. And yet Grady finds himself connecting with James for reasons he is unsure of.
Most of the laughs in this movie stem from the script's bizarreness rather than its cleverness. There are times when the film tries to be weird just for the sake of being weird. The past few months have been peppered with unusual scripts, but the outstanding ones have blended the bizarre with the original while maintaining a sense of purpose. You can't have insanity without reason.
Still, Wonder Boys is a winner because Grady is such a lovable lug. He is so lost and so confused that our hearts go out to him. Douglas, in a wonderful performance, milks this quality for all it's worth. It's fun to watch him transform from the contemptuous, greedy tycoon that he played in his last three movies to the veritable puppy dog he is here. Sometimes, we just want to reach into the screen and pet him on the head.
The supporting characters are much less approachable, though they're often funny. Maguire's James Leer, especially, remains a cipher. There are many attempts to humanize him, but he always remains too quirky and too contrived for us to believe that he is real. This is not to berate Tobey Maguire, who does the best he can with the script and turns in an amusing, if not an affecting performance.
By the end, Grady Tripp has completed a journey and undergone a transformation. We're with him every step of the way. Sort of. The trouble is that none of the supporting characters matter. They're all there to propel the plot along, to act as forces in Grady Tripp's life. They have no human qualities. I suppose that was the intention: to a man so utterly stoned as Grady, hardly anyone around him would have human qualities. Still, I wished for more than one interesting character. After all, even the most interesting element will get tiring after a while, if there is nothing to back it up. Fortunately, Wonder Boys runs a mere 112 minutes.
Grade: B
©2000 Eugene Novikov
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