Wonder Boys

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Wonder Boys
Review: If you want to find a good movie released in the year 2000, find one made on a small budget with little to no advertising. A movie that will open and close before the ink of the critic's reviews has even dried. Wonder Boys was the most mature, the least predictable, and the most entertaining grown-up American movie made last year. The story follows Tenured creative writing Professor Grady Tripp through an outrageous, hectic weekend 7 years after the publication of a highly successful novel. His young wife has just left him, he is having an affair with his boss's wife, smokes marijuana, has one ultra-gifted, possibly suicidal young man in his class, and has a sultry young student boarding in his home who seems very willing to take the place of his wife. In addition to this, his agent comes to town wanting to see his long-delayed sophomore novel, his boss's wife just found out she's pregnant, and there's a strange man insisting that Grady Tripp stole his car.

I guess the marketing department, when they looked at this film, had no idea on how to sell it. It has no special effects. No really big waves or gladiators. It doesn't have lots of music video style shots of cars getting stolen or attractive young women in skimpy outfits dancing on a bar. Instead of all that vacuous eye candy, this movie offers up three dimensional characters with true to life dialogue.

But then again, they managed to promote American Beauty well enough. And this movie, while also being about a man in a mid-life crisis, is in many ways better. This was probably the only American made movie that should have been considered for best picture last year.

Rating:
Summary: Juat Great Entertainment
Review: My head is swimming from reading the many deeply analytical and erudite reviews of this movie. I'm sure they are all valid but I enjoyed it on a much less intellectual level. The slightly whacky story of a burnt-out author/professor and his brilliant but skewed student was, I thought, just plain fun. Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire were superb and laugh-out-loud funny with a deadpan humor that I found enchanting. Similarly, Frances McDormand (who is always good) and Robert Downey Jr. were excellent--in fact, the whole cast was excellent. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie and I have seen it several times since my first viewing and expect to see it many times more. I highly recommend it as a slightly bent-out-of-shape feel-good gem.

Rating:
Summary: A Movie About the Great American Novel
Review: Let's just make one thing clear - I hate Michael Douglas. He's a bad actor and a fop; William Shatner with a better hairpiece. Still, Wonder Boys was a hell of a movie. I've never been in a writing workshop, but I imagine Wonder Boys conveyed the experience pretty well, from the pressure on the faculty to publish to the cutting remarks of fellow students in workshop to the fawning atmosphere of literary festivals. I can see Wonder Boys becoming the Paper Chase of creative writing.

And for once I found a Michael Douglas that didn't annoy me. Here he was wounded and unsure of himself, not at all the arrogant bastard I've come to hate from movies like Wall Street and Basic Instinct. His portrayal of the battered Grady Tripp on the weekend that his wife leaves him is something I never thought him capable of. He showed more depth here than he's ever shown in anything else I've seen of his. If only there wasn't that annoying attempt to look fey on the poster.

The other actors also turned in excellent performances. Robert Downey, Jr., was funny and kept the movie from getting bogged down in the relationship beween Douglas and Maguire. Frances McDormand's facial expressions reflected both the emotion she felt for Grady, and the trouble she had in dealing with his immaturity. Tobey Maguire was also good, but still, his character, while the object of some sympathy, was also pretty damn annoying. I must reserve the highest praise for Richard Knox (Vernon Hardapple), whose perfectly executed butt print and satisfied bow cracked me up.

The action takes place over one weekend at a small college outside of Pittsburgh. This weekend coincides with the college's annual literary festival, and opens with Tripp's wife having left him and his agent on the way to check up on the status of Tripp's gargantuan unfinished novel, the titular Wonder Boys. The focus is on the relationship between Tripp and Maguire's James Leer, a prodigiously talented student in Tripp's writing workshop. Over the course of this weekend, which traces James' journey from freak to wonder boy - a young and talented literary light - there are hilarious encounters with a blind dog, a Ford Galaxie, and a pregnant waitress named Oola. It sounds unbelievable, but it all evolves naturally from the plot and the man that Grady Tripp is. Everything gets resolved, even if the ending may be a little too neat.

In my opinion, this is one of the few movies where the screenplay is as good as, if not slightly better than, the novel upon which it was based. I thought the screenwriter did an admirable job of streamlining the original novel into a two-hour movie, and that he cut the right things and added one or two scenes I'm sure Chabon might have wished he thought of.

Wonder Boys left me exhilarated, and I watched it two times in a row. The next day I ran to get the novel, and I regretted not seeing the movie when it was still in theaters. For anyone who has an interest in writing, who wants to see an excellent movie, or who just wants to see if Michael Douglas can act, this is something you will be glad you saw.

Rating:
Summary: Smart, witty, and beautiful film
Review: Wonder Boys is a welcome departure from the onslaught of flashy and inane movies attaining recent popularity. There is no action, no gratuitous sex or violence-- not to say that I'm not a fan of those, but this movie is quite beyond that. The writing is brilliant and the acting even more so. Tobey Maguire provides a multidimensional and very real portrayal of the supporting protagonist. Michael Douglas is flawless and Robert Downey Jr. is sharp and stellar. The DVD, with great interviews and the addition of the Bob Dylan music video, is a fantastic purchase.

Rating:
Summary: Life on Mars
Review: "Wonder Boys" purports to take place at a small university in Pittsburgh. Whatever. I'd have an easier time believing it took place on Mars, inhabited by a strange sub-species of humanity that has been lobotomized of any sense of sanity. Every character has a quirk or a twitch, designed to separate their existence from and endear them to the audience. Grady Tripp can't seem to finish his 2000+-page novel or the baggie of pot stored in his glove compartment (although he tries and tries with both). Book editor Crabtree is gay, with a penchant for both statuesque drag queens and morbid young authors. Young author James Leer is brilliant and talented, yet he is prone to roaming the woods at night with an antique cap gun, and has a kleptomaniacal fetish for Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. It goes on and on like this. This character is weird. That one's strange. Look at this interesting tick! Admire that fetish, that obsession, that self-destructiveness! There are no (absolutely none, believe me I looked) characters here normal enough to ground the movie in any kind of sanity. Even the weather gets in on the action. One memorable day starts out with a torrential downpour of rain, shifts into a sunny and spring-like afternoon, and degenerates into a snowstorm at night. I never realized Pennsylvania had such an unstable weather system!

I get the feeling that all this madness was better suited to the printed page than the screen. I haven't read Michael Chabon's source novel, but I assume he explains why James Leer has a Marilyn fixation (telling me that she's "lonely" and hey, so is he, is not enough). Or why Grady and Crabtree feel justified in rescuing Leer from the horrors of his upper-class parents, and then immediately hand him over to the police. Or how a small Pittsburgh university can organize an event called "WordFest" (!), and draw thousands to an auditorium for a speech by the pompous English department chair (and furthermore, how said small university can boast not one, but two big-time authors on its faculty). The movie never delved into these issues, and I for one found the whole mess confusing.

That's not to say that I didn't have fun trying to muddle through the confusion. Mostly, the credit for that should go to the actors. The cast is populated by a host of my favourites. Frances McDormand makes me melt everytime she bugs out those fiercely intelligent eyes of hers. Her character, the university chancellor (as well as the "other" woman), could have easily been loathsome. But she has such warmth and appeal, that by the end you sympathized with her situation fully. Tobey Maguire does this kind of dead-eyed wounded deer role perfectly. I bought his character's obsessions, passions, and intelligence without giving it a second thought. Robert Downey Jr. had what I think was the toughest role, in that he had to bring humanity and likability to his prowling and maniacal book editor, who's eager for another success but unwilling to push his author too much. And he had the tough job of seducing Maguire's character without looking completely lecherous. I think he pulled it off. Rip Torn and Katie Holmes had small and somewhat insubstantial roles. He did his best in portraying a blustering author blessed with commercial success. She was little more than wallpaper. And what to say of Michael Douglas? I've never really enjoyed the man's work. He is at his best, though, when he can use his movie-star chin and rich voice to portray men of dignity and power (I enjoyed him most in "The American President"). Here he is disheveled and self-destructive, sporting unkempt hair and peculiar glasses. So, does it work? In the beginning, no. But I do admit that by the end, Michael Douglas got lost in there somewhere, and all I saw on the screen was Grady Tripp (the transformation occurred right around the time when his narrative voiceovers stopped; it is a technique used too often unsuccessfully). So, kudos Mike.

The one thing that director Curtis Hanson did get right was exorcising most examples of the writing the characters produced. "Finding Forrester" fell into this trap. You can't tell me this writer is gifted, and then read to me examples of his work that border on illiterate. Here, we get flashes of James Leer's prose, and if you look hard enough you can read a couple of lines from Tripp's novel. But it's kept to a minimum, thus keeping intact the illusion that these people are all special talents.

In the final analysis, "Wonder Boys" left me confused and empty, unsure of what the point of the whole endeavor was. But while I was watching it, I was engrossed in the characters' very illogical lives, wondering if any of it would make sense in the end, but suspicious that it didn't really matter anyway.

Rating:
Summary: I was a teen-aged Wonder Boy.
Review: I always try very hard not to compare movies to books that they might be based on. I always feel that a film should sink or swim on its own, so to speak. They should be judged as an independent piece of art, because in actuality, that's what they are. After all, every piece of art is going to be based on some experience by the artist. So what if the work is based on another piece of art. That said, the moment that the credits rolled in this film, I felt that I had no choice but to read the book.

That's actually meant to be a compliment. A lot of people will say about a movie "you should read the book." And by that, they mean, "the book is better." That's not why I wanted to read the book. I was so moved by the film that I wanted an opportunity to totally immerse myself in the world in which it took place. I ordered the book from Amazon the next morning and have only just begun to read it. I can only hope that it will move me as well as the film did. Given the depth of the talents of its Pulitzer Prize winning author, Michael Chabon, I don't expect that I will be disappointed. I will likely write a review of it as well, but I wanted an opportunity to review the film as a piece unto itself first without hampering my opinions based additional knowledge from the book.

What really struck me was how real the film was. At least from my point of view. I felt as though I knew those people. I felt as though I lived that life. Part of that may be due to the fact that I did live that life (I graduated with an English degree from Carnegie Mellon University, where this movie was filmed), but I think a lot of it was also due to honesty with which these characters were portrayed. From Katie Holmes's Hannah, the mysterious cute girl in the class with an obvious crush on the professor to the Michael Douglas's Grady, mildly successful, more of a writer than a teacher with a fine eye for detail that will zone in on a single aspect to sum up the entire character and personality of a real life individual (like her feet).

This film is beautiful. I mean it simply breathtaking. I was enrolled at CMU for six and a half years. As I said before, I have been to each location seen in that film more times than I can count, but I can honestly say that I saw the campus in an entirely new light and I will never be able to look at it the same way again. The scenery makes this picture. I've lived in Pittsburgh for nearly a decade, but whenever anyone asks me where I am from, I have always told them Cleveland (my original hometown). But after seeing what the film crew did here, I am proud to live in Pittsburgh. A little bit of movie magic has turned this burned out steel city into a thing of beauty. And I mean movie magic. The movie was actually filmed during an uncharacteristically warm winter. Almost all the snow in the film is fake. It was astounding to see the crew pumping fake snow out all over the place during filming, but it comes across wonderfully realistic in the film.

I recommend this film to anyone and everyone. I watch a lot of movies, and I can usually find something nice to say about almost all of them. But it is very seldom that I see a film that touches me in the same way that this one did (the most recent before this was American Beauty). I especially recommend this film to anyone who is familiar with Pittsburgh; the creative writing process or who has at some point found themselves at a difficult crossroads in life. In short, I recommend the movie to anyone like me. But the thing is, I recommend this movie to anyone who isn't like me. Go see this film. You'll be glad you did. And if by any chance you are anything like me, then perhaps you will find a bit of yourself in this film. Perhaps you will find out that you're a Wonder Boy as well.

Rating:
Summary: Very good, funny film
Review: This has probably been said of every performer in nearly every movie they ever made, but, seriously, this is probably Michael Douglas's best performance to date. Yes, yes, Traffic and Wall Street are each close seconds. Toby Maguire departs from his usual, likeable, huggable kind of character in favor of a likeable but oddball kinda guy. Katie Holmes is better than her personal average in her role. Frances McDormand is about on par with her other roles (which is rather good). If you like strong plot elements, this movie will probably disappoint you. There are a few things that get started early on, but they're mainly just excuses for the characters to interact. I love this kind of character-driven movie, so I think it's great.

Rating:
Summary: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.......
Review: I know I shouldn't have let it got to me but, I can't help it. I really got mad after reading through some of the comments other's made about this movie. I never had any sort of intention to review this movie, but people's comments enraged me so I had to. As we should all know by now this was the first movie Curtis Hanson made after "L.A. Confidential". I never understood why the public makes such a big deal about a director's next project after they have a hit. Why don't they concern themself with the hit movie instead? Anyway, I saw "Wonder Boys" when it came out in theathers, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the acting by the entire cast had it moments. Everyone at one point of the film was given a scene where they were allowed to shine. Michael Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a struggling novelist, who had a hit novel once before, but for some reason can't seem to finish his new novel. It already is well over a 1,000 pages. If that isn't bad enough for Tripp, he finds out that his friend\editor (Robert Downey Jr.) is coming in town to check up on how Gripp's novel is going. His girlfriend\mistress has just informed him that she is going to have a baby, she is played quite amusingly by Francis McDormand. And, his wife is now going to divorce him. Yep, it sounds like the begining of a perfect day for Grady Tripp. Now, why the American public has a problem with this story-line is beyond me. If I were to read this on someone else's review I would think it sounds like a good,funny comedy that would seem enjoyable to watch. The movie based on a novel by Michael Chabon, with a screenplay by Steven Kloves does have it's moments of sentiment and laughter. It's tender while being humorous. And that's why I like the movie. It tries to seem "human" while it's outragous at the same time. When thinking back on the movie it sorta reminds me of old screwball comedies. Not that the movie has slapstick to it, but if you've ever seen movies like "The Awful Truth", you'll know what I'm talking about. I read one reviewer bash the title of the movie, OK, now, we're going to far, now we're just bashing the movie just for the sake of bashing it. That, is not a good reason to say you hate a movie, I'm sorry. You have to give a better reason then that. Comment on the acting, the screenplay, the directing, but not the title! I only take one star off this movie because I felt that it would of been better if they went into the whole Katie Holmes (Hannah Green)\ Michael Douglas relationship. This was a great movie, one I really enjoyed, and it in my opinion was one of the best films of 2000! Everyone should try to make an effort to see this movie. Those that have and didn't enjoy it, I'm sorry you had such an awful time, let some time pass and try to watch the movie again, who knows, maybe you might like it.

Rating:
Summary: What a waste of a good cast.
Review: This movie has the makings of something special - good actors, interesting plot, but the way it was made just makes it boring. I ended up not caring about any of the characters which is fine because nothing really happens to any of them. A resolution to one problem at the end was nice, but otherwise this movie was a tease of what it should have been. Don't blink or you might miss the adorable Katie Holmes.

Rating:
Summary: Wondering Boys ?
Review: My initial reaction after watching this movie was "Huh?" This movie has very little in the way of a followable plot-line. Arguably the worst movie I've ever seen, this film was definitely a step- down for the likes of Micheal Douglas. Not recommended.