director
Curtis Hanson
screenwriter
Steve Kloves
based on
the novel by
Michael
Chabon
producers
Curtis Hanson
Scott Rudin
cinematographer
Dante Spinotti
music
Christopher Young
editor
Dede Allen
cast
Michael Douglas (Grady Tripp)
Tobey Maguire (James Leer)
Frances McDormand (Sara Gaskell)
Robert Downey Jr. (Terry Crabtree)
Katie Holmes (Hannah Green)
Rip Torn (Quentin Moorewood)
Richard Knox (Vernon Hardapple)
Jane Adams (Oola)
Michael Cavadias (Miss Antonia)
Richard Thomas (Walter Gaskell)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: February 25,
2000
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other curtis
hanson films
reviewed on this website:
- 8
mile
- l.a.
confidential
|
Michael
Douglas' performance in Wonder Boys is being talked about
as a stretch, but it's the kind of stretch you indulge in after
a good night's sleep. Usually coiled, tense, and angry (I once
wrote that he "has always seemed the least relaxed of actors"),
Douglas lets himself go to pot -- literally -- as Grady Tripp,
English professor, respected author of one novel and frustrated
writer of its belated follow-up. Grady shuffles through his days,
a fiftyish man both tired of his rut and too comfortable in it
to do much about it; he finds a kind gesture for almost everyone
except himself.
Grady meanders along, more or less amiably, and the movie follows
his lead. Wonder Boys was adapted from Michael Chabon's
novel by screenwriter Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys),
who understands baby-boomer melancholy but doesn't make the mistake
of treating it too seriously; at times, Grady is like a big kid,
lost inside baggy clothes and smoking weed on his porch. Director
Curtis Hanson, whose last film was the hair-trigger epic L.A. Confidential,
seems to relax and breathe in Grady's academic world; having
shown his aptitude at two very different character studies, Hanson
should never go back to formulaic thrillers like The River
Wild and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. It's as if
he'd discovered the pleasures of people.
These people, indeed, are made realistic enough that even the
most absurd situations don't push the movie overboard. Grady
takes an interest in a talented young writer in his class, James
Leer (Tobey Maguire), a morbid kid with a natural, spontaneous
gift for making things up. James respects Grady but doesn't idolize
him or want to be him -- he's not your usual clichéd
protege. James, who can rattle off celebrity suicides in alphabetical
order, is also of uncertain sexuality; he's more interested in
Grady's omnisexual editor Terry (Robert Downey Jr., blossoming
in this easygoing atmosphere) than in Grady's other star student
(Katie Holmes).
Wonder Boys has a pleasant improvisatory feel -- it's
as if Grady and James were collaborating on the story we're watching.
Hanson finds just the right tone for each scene, whether a bitter
exchange between Grady and his pregnant lover Sara (Frances McDormand)
or a touch of slapstick involving a blind dog. Though it's ostensibly
set in Pittsburgh, I read it as a New England movie in essence,
with its constant rain and snow and fatalism. The movie is also
generous-hearted towards everyone, even Sara's dippy, DiMaggio-obsessed
husband (Richard Thomas). When Terry visits Grady, accompanied
by an extremely tall crossdresser, some of the audience inevitably
titters, but Grady treats the crossdresser with as much casual
respect as he does anyone else, and they have a nice, useful
chat later in the movie.
I suppose the simplistic way to view Douglas' switcheroo here
is that in past movies, he has specialized in showing us the
loser -- the amoral, lustful weakling -- inside the winner; here,
he does the opposite. He allows Grady a certain sad, rumpled
dignity without bending over backwards to make him noble. Those
who find Douglas an arrogant actor may simply be responding to
a great actor who has played arrogant men effectively. There's
no arrogance in Grady, and none in the movie, either. Wonder
Boys even makes room for a character Grady "creates"
-- a man he spots across a bar and idly fictionalizes -- who
comes back to haunt him, but then turns out to be a decent man
who accidentally drives Grady to his final epiphany. This outwardly
gloomy movie is as gentle and pleasant a film as we're likely
to get from a major studio this year. |
