Almost wonderful. (Wonder Boys (DVD))

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	Wonder Boys (DVD)
Date:	07/12/00 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great performances, pleasant atmosphere, and many funny moments

Disadvantages: : Abrupt and pat ending

Director Curtis Hanson finally follows up the much-acclaimed LA CONFIDENTIAL with a clever and amusing comedy-drama that integrates star power with a literate screenplay.

Michael Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a dope-smoking English professor and writer who is struggling to complete his new novel some seven years after his first was hailed as a classic. On the eve of his University’s ‘WordFest’ writing festival his wife leaves him and his mistress (Frances McDormand) announces that she is pregnant. He is also burdened with one of his students, James Leer (Tobey Maguire), who is a gifted writer but is also evidently unstable and dangerously unpredictable. To complicate matters further, Tripp’s editor (Robert Downey Jr) has just flown in, expecting delivery of the new novel, and accompanied by a transsexual…

Vaguely reminiscent of THE LOST WEEKEND, Billy Wilder’s 1945 Oscar-winner about an alcoholic writer, WONDER BOYS is an unusually intelligent piece of cinema. A lot of the comedy is very broad, exemplified by the employment of a dead dog, a transsexual, and other such devices for comic effect. But this is tempered with some serious, even profound passages of dialogue, and some thought-provoking drama.

A film such as WONDER BOYS is heavily reliant upon its actors, and it is in this department that it truly excels. Douglas has never been better as the blackout-prone Grady Tripp, on the one hand brilliant and endearing, and on the other disaster-ridden and laughable (he spends many scenes in a pink dressing gown). Maguire is as engagingly weird as usual, and in a rare excursion from jail, Downey Jr impresses as the flamboyant but desperate editor. McDormand is also good, although she is probably underused.

The locations are attractive, and Bob Dylan and Neil Young feature on an unabashedly anachronistic soundtrack. The only disappointment is the film’s ending, which is abrupt and a little too &#
8216;Hollywood’ for what is such a dark and sophisticated comedy. But this is a minor gripe given how well crafted the film is up until then.

It is good to see thriller-specialist Hanson showing that he can direct comedy, and this is certainly a shot in the arm for Douglas’s career after some unchallenging roles in recent years. WONDER BOYS is not a truly great film, but it is very hard dislike, and will stimulate the brain more than most movies you’re likely to see.

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