Overall Rating
  Awesome: 53.74%
Worth A Look: 29.25%
Average: 6.8%
Pretty Bad: 7.48%
Total Crap: 2.72%
13 reviews, 69 user ratings
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| Wonder Boys |
by Brian McKay
"Could this small wonder be 'The Perfect Film'?"
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It's so fucking rare that I can't find anything to nitpick about in a movie. Even after LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS -the single most beautiful, amazing, exhilarating, mind-blowingly orgasmic epic to yet grace the big screen, there was a frame or two of dodgy CGI here and there. Truly an insignificant nitpick, but a nitpick nonetheless. But ask me to nitpick WONDER BOYS . . . and I gots nothin'.Seriously. I can't find a goddamn thing wrong with it. Not one dramatic scene that rings emotionally hollow. Not one bit of dialogue that comes off sounding stilted. Not one joke that misfires. Not one moment that feels either dumbed down or pretentious and elitist. It's just a great fucking movie that feels effortless to enjoy from beginning to end. But maybe I have one little advantage that most people watching this don't have. I'm a writer.
I'm not saying I'm a good writer, although I have been occasionally told that I have some chops. And I would in no way tout myself as a professional writer - although I recently started getting a check on the side for some freelance work, and I gotta say it feels pretty damn good to have someone actually paying you for doing something you love. But good or bad, pro or am, I am a writer, and while there's something here for everyone to enjoy, I think this film was really made for me and my ilk.
Michael Douglas? Can't praise him enough here. What a joyous change of pace this is from the kinds of roles he usually ends up in (white-collar psycho/corporate exec asshole/scheming wife-killer etc.). Not that he isn't consistently great in most of the roles he takes on, but he's just so wonderfully droll and down to earth here as University English Professor Grady Tripp. I haven’t seen such a perfect display of deadpan (and non-characteristic) comedic timing since Bill Murray in Rushmore. And unlike most voice-over narration, Douglas’s frequent interjections seem to hit all the right notes.
Yes, Grady Tripp is a professor, but more than that, he’s a writer. He smokes an unhealthy amount of weed (this coming from someone who has smoked it copiously of late). He shuffles around the house in his “writing robe” (the most hideous, faded, ratty red monstrosity you’ll ever see). He rents a room in his ramshackle Victorian to gorgeous young student Hannah (Katie Holmes), who has a crush on him and his work. He bangs school Chancellor Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand) behind the backs of both his young trophy wife and Sara’s husband – who just happens to be the Dean of the English department, and his boss. He also teaches a class full of students, knowing that only one of them is destined for literary greatness – the brooding and elusive James Leer (Tobey Maguire, who is just as amazing as Douglas here). James writes the kind of stories that make the average reader want to kill themselves, carries around a loaded firearm “for luck”, and is able to recite the date and method of any given celebrity suicide with savant-like precision. He also happens to be a damn good writer – the kind Grady used to be, and would like to be again.
Grady Tripp is about to have the longest, strangest weekend of his life, and just to kick things off right, his wife leaves him. As if he isn’t under enough stress, the university is hosting its “Wordfest” writer’s symposium this weekend, and his flamboyant bisexual party-boy editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.) has just hit town with a painfully mannish transvestite on his arm and an itch to have a look at Tripp’s latest manuscript. See, Tripp hasn’t put anything out since his critic’s sweetheart of a novel The Arsonist’s Daughter was released 8 years ago – and if Terry doesn’t get a finished manuscript out of him soon, he’s going to lose his job. But contrary to the popular rumor floating around between Tripp’s students and fellow faculty members, he isn’t suffering from writer’s block. He has been stricken with the opposing malady of the Smith-Corona squirts – he can’t stop writing his latest novel and has no idea how to end it.
It’s at the Wordfest opening night party at Sara’s house that Tripp’s life begins to take an insane spiral. Giving many more plot details would be a disservice to the viewer, so suffice it to say that beginning with a dead dog and a purloined jacket once owned by Marilyn Monroe, Trip has a weekend in which to make a major life decision, clean up James’ messes while helping him realize his potential as a great writer, and re-discover the muse that used to burn so brightly within himself.WONDER BOYS is based on a novel by Michael Chabon (who I am delighted to see will be penning the screenplay for the upcoming SPIDERMAN sequel). While most people will find much to enjoy and laugh at in WONDER BOYS, it’s the English majors, the academicians, and especially the writers who will embrace it the most. You people know who you are – those who write not because they want to, or even because they can, but because they must. A single line sums it up perfectly, when Tripp is asked why he kept working on a novel that he didn’t really like and didn’t know how to end. He merely responds with, “I couldn’t stop”.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=1857&reviewer=258
originally posted: 12/29/02 06:54:50
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USA
25-Feb-2000 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
03-Aug-2000 (M)
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