Rating: 
Summary: The Wonder Duds
Review: "The Wonder Boys" wants to be a smart movie like "Good Will Hunting." Alas, it commits the cardinal sin of a smart movie in that when you think about it afterward, the implausibilities and inconsistancies of the plot begin to leap out at you. Though well acted by Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., and Tobey Maguire, the story itself is fairly pointless. The first hour in particular, drags by and as a viewer you are not sure where, if anywhere, the movie is going. In the second hour, the direction becomes more clear, but it is still rather hard to care because the characters are so off-putting. Maguire's character, as the young eccentric writer, is annoyingly obtuse and never becomes well defined. Downey's character, the flamboyant gay publisher's representative adds an element of fun, but at the end the movie cheats by having him enact a too tidy resolution that seems impossible given that he cofesses to Douglas earlier that his employer is about to fire him. And Douglas's character, allegedly an English professor and one time successful novelist, just drifts through the movie until an ending that causes him to make a major change in his life without any kind of cathartic experience to trigger it. The part about his 2600 page novel is completely unconvincing.A couple of other minor characters, like Katie Holmes as another of Douglas's students and Rip Torn as a bestselling novelist add exactly nothing to the story. The biggest problem is that the movie mistakes cleverness for humor and in the end manages to outsmart itself. For a movie allegedly about fiction writers and their attempts to tell a great story, it remarkably falls well short of doing so. I also spotted at least one major continuity error as the weather changes from strong rainstorm to perfectly clear in two outdoor scenes meant to be only a few minutes apart. For shame to the film editor.
Rating: 
Summary: This Movie Is The Skeleton Of An Awesome Novel
Review: I loved the movie. Then I read the book. Then I realized how much better this movie could've been had the script followed the novel more closely. If you haven't read the book yet - read it. It explains so much.
Rating: 
Summary: funny as all hell
Review: check this out: James: Someone jumped on your car with their butt.
Grady: How can you tell?
James: You can see the outline of a butt! I laugh just thinking about this movie. I don't want to spoil it or anything, but it is my new favorite movie...maybe...next to "Fight Club." I don't know if it really hits home because it's a movie about writing (me being a writer of sorts), or if it's a movie about priorities and decisions and other human things, or if Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr just make me happy. But, in case I haven't convinced you yet, get this: there's a character named Vernon Hardapple. Sold? I thought so.
Rating:
Summary: Great movie 10/10!
Review: I saw this movie when my sister rented it (because she's in love with Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr) but I ended up being in love with it myself. It's very rare for a Hollywood film these days to be this good. It features uniformly excellent performances from all the actors involved, and they all play fascinating and well-developed characters (all quirky, but still very likable.) That's a miracle in itself for a studio production these days, (I'm pretty surprised that this wasn't more of an Oscar favourite to be honest..) The story is multi-layered, the script is witty and (very subtley) hilarious, even the soundtrack is great! I haven't seen a movie like this (that I couldn't find fault with) in years! I've since bought this movie on DVD and watched it many times (it's one of those films that you can just watch over-and-over-and-over and not get bored with.) Put simply, this is a great movie and I recommend it to anyone and everyone who appreciates great movie-making. 5 stars. 2 enthusiastic thumbs up. 10/10. A+
Rating: 
Summary: I Guess I'm Not Smart Enough
Review: I love movies and I do pay attention to what happens in them. 'Wonder Boys' really makes me wonder who is in charge of okaying a project in the land of Hollywood. 'Wonder Boys' makes me wonder what the percentage the agents of these actors actually receive. In all honesty, this movie isn't about anything. There isn't anything about the characters you find out 2 hours after you watched it that you didn't realize after the first five minutes of the film. A "brilliant" student experiments with alcohol and that's about it. Go to a rocky cliff with a friend who can't hold his/her liquor, get them boozed up and watch the results. It will be much more entertaining than this production. After wasting nearly two hours of my life watching this production and pleading to the motion picture gods that something would actually occur (heaven forbid), I was left motionless. Trust me on this, nothing happens in this movie. it isn't about anything at all...and that's really disappointing when you consider a man who brought you something as great as 'LA Confidential' was behind this mess. Please don't forget the outstanding cast as well... I can only wonder what in the hell the lot of them were thinking. This movie is a disaster.
Rating:
Summary: Low
Review: On a recomendation from a friend I rented this He said it was great and his favourite film of the year. After listening to Michael Douglas drone on for just over an hour I had had enough.What is the meaning of this?, why should I care? This was the first film I have ever turned off. I cannot find anything good to say so I'll keep it short,STAY AWAY. I was lucky I had also rented the Sopranos series 2, you might not be so lucky. Avoid.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh So Close to Greatness...
Review: Wonder Boys is not one of those movies you think is great because of the story, but is in fact an example of great acting and dialogue. While I think the story is interesting, I believe you could almost throw it out and as long as you maintained the cast and the dialogue, I still would have sat and been pleased to have watched. Personally, I am shocked to be writing this because I believe I am one of the greatest critics of Michael Douglas ever. I typically think he is a two bit joke whose been puffed up on Hollywood telling him he's wonderful-and no I am not jealous because he married Catharine Zeta-Jones. Instead, the chemistry between he and Toby McGuire is incredible. The way the two play off of each other makes you realize that there maybe is a craft to this acting thing after all. In fact, this movie makes me believe that Toby McGuire may become the finest actor of my generation. He rings of a modern day Jimmy Stewart with his subtle good looks and unique delivery. In fact, I think McGuire in Pleasantville was amazing and even his appearance on Saturday Night Live made me believe the show actually was funny. He has a gift and the performance between he and Douglas really demonstrates how vast a gift he has. The only criticism of the movie is that I feel like it was too caught-up being a writer's story. It felt a bit obsessed with making you feel as if you needed to understand the hierarchy and life of a writer. Newsflash to people who write stories about writers writing books and movies about making movies (especially you Get Shorty & Bowfinger), we don't care how tragic or funny you think your little world is, find your catharsis elsewhere. In the end, I just feel that perhaps they should have watched a few David Mamet plays and then shot the movie. KISS--Keep it Simple Stupid. The acting is great. The dialogue is great. The story leaves you going, its so close... oh so close.
Rating:
Summary: Great meditation on wiriting hobbled by weak script
Review: Michael Douglas is Grady Tripp, a moderately famous author who hasn't been able to follow-up the promise of his first novel, "Arsonist's Daughter". Toiling away teaching undergrad writing at an old New England university (actually, it looks pretty much like Penn), he lusts after Sara, (Frances Mcdormand) the wife of a dean. Though she seems as interested, she suspects Grady of secretly harboring hopes of patching things up with his ex, and she's married anyway, to another dean who spends money buying Hollywood memorabilia on E*Bay. With no prospects, he endures constant nagging from his agent, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey, Jr., in another of those ambiguous roles that he could have written himself) about the prospects for the planned follow-up to "Arsonist's Daughter". Unable to tell Crabtree of his lack of progress, Tripp toils away at the typewriter while smoking pot and churning out pages to a book that has now numbers over 2000 pages. Tripp's marijuana habit, probably innocuous at one time, now causes blackouts and has otheriwse destroyed his focus and ability to write cogent books of less than 1000 pages. The story picks up when Grady discovers somebody even more sexually and morally ambiguous than himself and Crabtree put together - one of Tripp's own students. James (Toby Maguire). Though a seeming failure at writing (Tripp's other writing workshop students unanimously despise James' work which they see as epitomizing Catholic angst, or simply bad), James has already written a novel, as Tripp discovers when taking the dark-minded student under his wing (his writing skills aside, James can also tell you how each Hollywood legend - in alphabetical order - killed themselves). "Wonderboys" is actually a lot of fun, but it begins seeping out of your head before it even comes to an end. Curtis ("LA Confidential") Hanson's direction offers tons of fun twists, but none of them connect into a story, and, by the time the flick is half-done, you're ready to ignore any new ones. Working with a script by Steve ("Fabulous Baker Boys") Kloves, Hanson almost defeats himself. He creates a sense of time and space - literary lions are gathered at the university for its annual "Wordfest", but then relegates the event to a backburner: it's business as usual for the pot-smoking Tripp, with no tension or release promised by the coming event. James is also a trip, with Grady discovering the student's tortured spirit actually a carefully constructed shell, covering up an existence of comfort. Nothing explains James' invented character other than his being a compulsive liar with a habit born by a naturally imaginative spirit. Tripp himself is a bundle of problems but they're mostly inconsistent - he can't openly love Sara, but his hopes for reuniting with his wife make that seem pointless. He can't finish his book, but it's not clear that he even has the direction to want to finish the book. He wants to help James out of his created self, but also wants to develop the boy's writing craft. Grady doesn't so much mull over these conflicts as simply changing his mind. It's almost like the script is at war with Tripp - between it's own hopes for a coherent story and Grady's lack of ambition, with Grady the winner. The script tosses in some more twists just so the story should have something to think about besides Grady's aimlessness - a towering transvestite, a dead dog, a stolen sweater worn once by Marilyn Monroe, a borrowed car - maybe stolen - and Rip Torn as a fellow teacher who's been wildly more successful at selling books than Grady. None of these things get enough attention to make a score, with the script giving more attention to the wordplay between Michael Douglas, Downey Jr., and Maguire than the story. In one magicla scene, set in a college-town bar, the three characters mull around and play a game for authors, and imagine whole identities and life-stories for the people that populate their surroundings. It's fun and a sign of the meditation on writing that "Wonder Boys" probably wanted to be. A great weeknight video.
Rating:
Summary: who cares ......
Review: this movie was below ho-hum. tobey maguire easily gives his most annoying performance. i disliked michael douglas' character. and i really had no interest in this movie. however i'm giving this movie two stars instead of one because it wasn't as long as *the green mile* and *magnolia*. if *wonder boys* had droned on for another hour, then i'm sure i would have hated it as much as those other two pathetic films. as it is, this was only two hour of maudlin liberal tripe.
Rating:
Summary: What movies should aspire to be
Review: Excellent writing, great direction and exceptional acting. A wonderful, entertaining movie that kept me guessing and laughing througout. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would from the previews. Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire were fun to watch. I just might have to buy this one to keep!
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