I generally find myself in agreement with macresarf1's reviews and I am far from being a Michael Douglas fan, but I thought he was quite good as the writer/professor in "Wonder Boys." (Rather than a blocked writer, he seems to be a blocked editor with a manuscript of more than 2000 pages he can not whip into any order.) I also thought that Tobey Maguire was quite spookily entertaining. I am recurrently amazed that so seemingly affectless an actor can move me (Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, and even Cider House Rules).And I thought the rainy Pittsburgh added to the film (setting up the clear day for the disposition of the typewritten manuscript).
Robert Downey, Jr. and Frances McDormand are delightful, but what else is new about that? Richard Thomas amusingly loses what he doesn't deserve and gets what he really wants.
OK, Michael Chabon's book is much funnier and (Pitttsburgh) atmospheric, but the film has its charms and it is the first time I can remember having any sympathy for a character played by Michael Douglas.
The anti-marijuana message (which I don't remember being in the book) is overemphatic. Did Barry McCaffrey give the studio money for this?
The plot: In so character-driven a film, I'm not sure that it matters much. A lot happens. The visiting editor acquires two manuscripts. The writer gets out of his rut and changes technology from typewriter to computer. Marilyn Monroe's wedding dress changes hands twice, an apparently stolen car once. An embarassing corpse is not easily disposed. Young writers gain experience, sexual and other. . . But mostly it is transformation of Michael Douglas's pickled hippie that matters.
In Curtis Hanson's WONDER BOYS based on the novel by Michael Chabon Michael Douglas delivers one of his most compelling performances as Grady Tripp a ...More at Family Video
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