Rating: 
Summary: The Cast Keeps It Together
Review: I somewhat enjoyed this movie for the cast. The story started good, but seemed to fizzle out by the end. Although the story didn't play well, the interaction between the characters kept the movie going. Every actor (Douglas, Mcguire, Downey Jr and even Holmes) played their part extremely well and that's what kept me from shutting off the movie. Every character had an interesting background that the movie never really touched on. All and all, it was an okay movie.
Rating: 
Summary: This Is Wonderful Film-Making
Review: Wonder Boys is a relatively uneventful picture yet somehow at the film's conclusion it's lead characters (and even a few of the secondary ones too) have arched, changing their lives forever. If I had to describe it in one word it would be "subtle." Maybe a little too subtle for audiences stateside who despite rave reviews from critics, basically panned the movie with a domestic box office take in the high teens. This from a movie that boasts L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson, megastar Michael Douglas and a winning soundtrack of classic songs that includes an original number by Bob Dylan, which also happens to be possibly the best song written for a film, ever!Douglas stars in one of his most unglamorous roles to date as Grady Tripp. He's an aging professor and acclaimed author who after seven years has yet to complete his much anticipated follow-up to his award-winning debut novel, Arsonists Daughter. He's encountering a form of writers block that rather than disallowing him to write, won't let him stop. His new book is now well over two thousand pages and as he puts it, "The ending seems to keep getting further away." His personal life is equally muddled. He's in love with the boss' wife (Frances McDormand) who also happens to be the chancellor of the university, going on his second divorce and finds himself involved with a student (Maguire) who triggers feelings of unfulfilled promise in him. James (Maguire), seeming particularly depressed one night, reaches out to Grady and the two embark on a journey of self-discovery that's as much a coming-of-age tale for this fifty-something professor as it is his student, thirty years his junior. This is a recurring message in the movie, that it's never too late to rediscover yourself. Their misadventures begin on the opening night of the university's annual gala Word Fest. Grady's publisher (Robert Downey, Jr.) is in town to swipe a peek at this long overdue novel, one of his most fetching students (Toledo's own Katie Holmes) is making advances, and with his marriage already on the rocks his girlfriend announces to him that she's pregnant. These are extraordinary events that unfold in a very realistic, true-to-life way which is what makes them so easy to relate to. It's not a film about overnight reformation but the simple intricacies of life and the gradual changes we encounter along the way. For Grady the transitions have been so refined that even he doesn't realize how far he's fallen from the person he aspired to become. Expectations have dampened his spirit and he's become so afraid of making a mistake that he refuses to make choices as to which way he wants to steer his life in. At this point he's just wandering through life without any real sense of purpose. This is beautifully expressed in Dylan's song, "Things Have Changed." In this five minute anthem he manages to capture the essence of the picture and nail it down to such an extent that it's almost as telling as the film itself. You see, the music is all a part of the story-telling process. Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Neil Young almost have as great of claims to writing credits as Oscar nominated scribe Steve Kloves. This is essential because it brings in people from all walks of life. As Douglas sits in his broken down car, smoking a joint, reading James' manuscript with Neil Young belting out "Old Man," we understand the significance of the moment without him ever having to say a word. If I have any complaints about the movie it would have to be that the ending is a little too neat for my taste. But that doesn't deter from my appreciation of this wonderful film that may have been lost on some but wasn't on me, and hopefully won't be on you either.
Rating: 
Summary: Something Different from Michael Douglas
Review: "Wonder Boys" is a quirky yet very entertaining comedy. It represents something old yet something new from Michael Douglas in that although he is once again playing a dark, conflicted character, this time the portrayal is for comedic effect. Douglas' character is Grady Tripp, a drugged out professor of literature whose life has slowly but steadily gone out of control since publishing the great American novel seven years earlier. His third wife has just left him and the wife of his boss (Frances McDormand), with whom he has been having an affair, is pregnant with his child. These plot twists and several more, such as a dead dog, the theft of a jacket once owned by Marilyn Monroe, Tripp's desparate female-impersonator dating literary agent (Robert Downey Junior), a brooding but brilliant writing student (Tobey Maguire, who has a gift for remembering celebrity suicides) and some crazy guy claiming that Grady's car belongs to him, all clash during a weekend writing festival being held at the college where Douglas teaches. The twists, turns, and interaction of all of these plot elements and characters provides for some dark but incredibly funny comedy. Surprisingly there are a number of negative reviews of this picture...., for example, says Maguire is "smarmy" and "ruins every picture he's been in". She's wrong. Maguire stands out as one of the best of his generation of actors. "She also refers to Douglas' voice as "droning" and makes it quite clear she never liked his acting to begin with. I wonder why she even bothered to watch this film in the first place given her attitude and disdain for the actors. Although some may choose to dismiss "Wonder Boys" as "trashy", pretentious, or just too dark, I actually think this could be one of the best motion pictures Michael Douglas has done in a while, and another tour-de-force bit of direction by Curtis Hanson ("L. A. Confidential"). This film also includes a very good soundtrack featuring Bob Dylan's Oscar winning song "Things Have Changed." The DVD is loaded with extras including cast and director interviews, a discussion of the music used in the film, and a map of various shooting locations. Just as in "L.A. Confidential", director Hanson does a very good job of explaining the creative process in the making of the picture although his recitation sounds canned. "Wonder Boys" is defintely not a comedy for those who just want to sit there and be entertained. You have to engage yourself in it to understand the comedy, but the payoff is worth the trouble. Watch it and decide for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: LOVED IT
Review: I missed this movie when it came out and I'm sorry I did. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The dialogue was witty and just plain funny. I honestly don't understand how anybody could think this was a bad movie. I laughed out loud at some of the lines. Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr were excellent, but they usually are. I rented this movie because of my respect for L.A. Confidential (in my top 10 movies of all time) which was directed by the same director, Curtis Hanson. I'd like to track down all his films now. Sit and enjoy this movie, the characters are a little quirky and the lines between Toby MacGuire and Michael Douglas after killing the dog are absolutely priceless. Very, very, very witty and funny!
Rating: 
Summary: BLANK SHEET
Review: I don't think that the problem of Curtis Hanson's WONDER BOYS lies in its screenplay. Even if the influence of Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS is patent. Michaël Douglas, like the hero of Scorsese's movie, is the passive witness or victim of a succession of strange events. The symbolic beginning of this journey into wonderland is a dog's bite. Curtis Hanson will never miss an occasion to remind us of Michaël Douglas's painful leg as long as the dream isn't over. No, the problem lies elsewhere. In fact, WONDER BOYS misses the mark simply because you don't care about the characters. It wouldn't have been so important if the intention of the director would have been to present a comic movie but since WONDER BOYS is a psychological comedy, the lack of interest you feel for the characters involved is fatal. I really don't care about Michaël Douglas's problems with his wife, his lack of inspiration or with Frances Mc Dormand. Robert Downey and Tobey Maguire characters are shallow and empty. And frankly, I don't have the slightest desire to read Douglas's first book " The Arsonist's Daughter " if it would have been really written. A DVD zone déjà vu.
Rating:
Summary: I really tried....
Review: ...to like this movie. And I almost did, but it didn't quite do it for me. I won't go into the story, because I think that's covered pretty well by the other reviews here, and to be honest, I would have a hard time explaining it adequately. I will say that the plot doesn't seem to follow a straight line- it twists and bends, bringing in new characters and increasingly zany situations, and appearing to make things up as it plods along. In some movies, this can be a good thing, but it doesn't work here because there are just too many unanswered questions. Why would anybody outside of a "Weekend at Bernie's"-type movie carry a dead dog in his trunk for an entire weekend? (Is it really better than just coming clean to the dog's owners, even if you are romantically involved with one of them?) What was the significance of "Vernon" arguing that the aforementioned car actually belonged to him... only to throw himself onto the hood, jump off, take a bow, and run away? Did I miss something? (I do admit that this scene was humorous, at least). We never really learn anything about James' life, either. Of course, that fits in with his characterization as a habitual liar... but even so, if the movie went as far as to introduce us to James' (one-dimensional) parents, you would think that we would have gotten a little more information about his background. (I won't even mention how underdeveloped Hannah's and Sarah's roles are... whoops, guess I just did.) Why do I give this movie three stars, and not less? It had a great cast, and a sharp sense of humor. Unfortunately, that got buried under a somewhat sloppy script. My only recommendation is that you rent before you buy, to make sure this is really something you will like.
Rating: 
Summary: One star too many
Review: Whether in voice-over or actually speaking, Michael Douglas' wooden, droning, unmodulated performance is not as animated as the ubiquitous monolith in 2001, a Space Odyssey. The actors and director must have been under some contractual obligation, for not since Steve Miller's ''Hearts Like a Wheel'' album of the late 70's has anything so horrible been released. To be fair, Frances McDormand was good. Robert Downey, Jr.'s camped-up, bug-eyed character was a little over the top, but his acting was at least on par with that of the baby McDormand carried in the final scene. Smarmy Tobey Maquire ruins every movie he's in. The only way this video will be worth the purchase price is if you open it and find instead ''Gladiator''.
Rating:
Summary: Best American movie of the season
Review: Actually I don't like American movies. I don't like happy endings and I don't like the icing that covers every Hollywood production. But this one was totally different. And I still can't understand why poeple didn't like it. I saw many bad critics here. The plot is twisted as the characters are twisted, too. The movie is about a terrible weekend where everything fails that can fail. Michael Douglas is fantastic as the literature professor who can't write anything original but tries to be something different. I'm still wondering he can act like this. But the one who steals the show is Tobey Maguire here. He delivers a very good performance as the big lier and the genial young writer. Frances McDormand is good as she always is - she brings the best supporting performance and Robert Downey Jr. is a pleasant surprise. I don't know who played the transvestite but he had the best line in the movie (she's called Antonia and when Douglas takes her home she says: "From now on my name's Tony. I'm going home."). All in all it was a very good movie and it is succesful here in Europe and I can't see why it wasn't succesful over there. Maybe because of the cast everyone thought it would be a light-hearted comedy. It's not that. It's a satire and a very good one indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Untreated Hollywood Sewage
Review: I'm beginning to wonder if there is anybody left with any talent in Hollywood. Somebody with some minor amount of originality, or intelligence, or creativity. You sure can't find it in this movie. It is so bad that you almost wonder if they intend these things to be stupid. Is it propaganda? This movie is cliché piled upon cliché, with a foundation of blatant political correctness, and beyond that, it is clumsily, insultingly stupid. It is a horrible film. I'm not going to rehash the plot because if you're reading this, you've probably seen it. I'll just go through some of the stupidities, and do so by focusing on the kid. First of all, we are meant to know he is a good writer because he's very sensitive. He cries rivers of sincere tears when he holds Marilyn Monroe's jacket. Nevermind intelligence, or education, or study, or guidance; sensitivity is all it takes to be a good artist. Didn't you know that, you idiot? Marilyn's jacket. The kid goes all goggy over it. We've already been bludgeoned into accepting the kid as an aspiring genius as a writer, but the only person the creators of this film can think of to have him emulate is Marilyn. Not Sartre, or Hemingway, or Hesse, or Salinger, or any of the hundreds of other famous or obscure WRITERS (that a precocious kid might like), but Marilyn Monroe. Do the filmmakers feel that their audience would be too stupid to pick up the literary allusions? Or is this all that they can come up with themselves? Or maybe this Marilyn fixation is meant to be satirical. Is that it? Maybe the Marilyn fixation is meant to show how vapid campus intellectual life is: the finest student in the school is nevertheless fixated upon such cultural irrelevance as the career of the showgirl, Marilyn Monroe. But, alas, that is not it either. She is treated far too reverently. How pathetic. The parents of the kid. They are uncaring, if you haven't guessed. We are meant to know they are uncaring because the woman is wearing a fur coat and the father is wearing a tux. This means they are rich. The rich are uncaring. Get it? After being dragged from wherever they were to come to the dumpy diner that the Michael Douglas character has their kid in, they don't even bother to get out of the car. Unbelievable. Stupid and unbelievable. Somewhere during this scene--Douglas falling apart, the kid going through his psychosis--we see them together and the Neil Young song, "Old Man," comes on the soundtrack. You know, "Old man, look at my life, twenty-four and so much mooore," etc. I actually guffawed at the blatant, dopey, obviousness of this. Did somebody actually think this up? And nobody laughed at him (or her) and told them how stupid it was? And they put it in anyway? Have we, as a society, really become so sheepish that we need to be guided by such maudlin doltishness? Society has pretty much accepted homosexuality now, and of course, Hollywood has as well, which also means that they have accepted all forms of it. So when the kid--who is probably eighteen or nineteen--is seduced by the flamboyantly gay editor--twenty years his senior--we are simply meant to shrug. The kid wakes up and we see that he is nonchalant; ho hum, just another night in some older man's bed. Really? But the movie portrays the kid as naïve--he doesn't even drink. It is implied that this may be his first sexual experience; or at least, his first homosexual experience. But again, he wakes up looking as if he's just finished playing a game of chess. C'mon! Is Hollywood so afraid of offending somebody that it can't even show a little ambiguity here? A little? A tiny bit? Any? Nope, we get none. This is a good example--and this movie is rife with them--of writing the story so that it conforms with currently accepted politically-correct dogma. As we've come to expect, it is completely out of touch with reality as anybody--gay or straight--knows it. And how does the kid get there? Well, he's typing away (yes, typing, on a typewriter), comfortable and sober in his parents basement. Our heroes, Douglas and Downey, decide they must rescue him. (From the terror of his parents oppresive, art-stultifying, upper middle-class, traditional-value home, we are meant to realize). As mentioned, he ends up in Downey's bed, with an approving nod from his mentor, Douglas. He is awakened the next morning in order to be taken to jail, for the various misdemeanors committed by himself and his new companions over the last couple of days or so. Now, these misdemeanors were committed with at least the help of Mr. Douglas, if not his outright encouragement, and as he's being hauled off to jail, they wave to him, as if he's going to camp or something. "Goodbye son! Don't eat too many marshmallows!" He's GOING TO JAIL! He's going to jail because of these guys, these adults, his teachers, his mentors, and THEY HAPPILY LET HIM! Like it's no big deal! They don't even go with him! Of course the kid goes and has the same one-dimensional, flat look on his face that he's carried heroically throughout the course of the rest of this drivel, but don't get me started on the acting. Space limitations prevent me from discussing the other preposterous elements of this film, but believe me, they are equally insipid. This movie is stinko.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible script neatly balanced by great acting
Review: First, I must say that the acting in this movie is monumentally, and universally great! Douglas does his duty. His performance is very reminscient of his role in "The Game" which is, to me, a five star film. And Downey performs his usual magic (it's just a shame that such talent is wasted in such a lifestyle - he is so good, I just wish he gets his act together before the courts get it together for him).
But the movie was inspiration for one thing - a new moniker for me: "bottle-rocket plot development." You briefly hear a hissing noise, something flys off in an random, odd direction, then BANG! It's gone.
Characters appear out of nowhere, do something seemingly random or bizzare, then disappear. I believe that fully HALF the cast of characters could have been completely left out (along with their lines) with no perceptible effect on the story at all.
Often, a plot thread is introduced and just as quickly disappears. It's brought back, sometimes, about half an hour later or longer, and reintroduced. The filmmakers seem to not realize that 45 minutes have passed with not so much as a mention of it. Do they really believe that we haven't noticed it's been missing in action all that time?
Example. An elderly couple come home and find a strange young man in their house, lying on their couch, smoking a joint and drinking their whiskey. Next scene? "How about some hot chocolate and cookies, dear?" Please. I don't care how comfortable you are with the guy he showed up with (Douglas), but who's going to go from wondering if they are being robbed to "cocoa and cookies, dear?"
The movie, expertly portrayed as it is, plateaus immediately and maintains all the way to the sudden end. Professor Tripp's exceptionally strange 36 hour romp is unexceptionally dull in it's relation to the viewer.
It's probably worth a watch if you, like the professor, toke on a doobie for the duration.
The movie portrays little or no gratuitous violence, bad language, or nudity - to it's credit. I really do not understand it's "R" rating. Perhaps the homosexual inuendo and portrayal (but NOT romaticized) drug use are the cause.
And, like I said, Michael Douglas turns in a commanding, and utterly believable performance - one of his finest.
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