Customer Reviews

Wonder Boys (Widescreen)

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

You enjoy the sights and thrill-a-minute ride but when you get off and try to describe the ride to someone else, it's hard to convey the full impact of the event and all the impact that it had on all your senses. The adventure seeking sense and the intelligence seeking sense as well.

Micheal Douglas. Wow, I thought I knew ya. But I had no idea he could be this loose and carefree and actually CONVINCE ME that he could play that role so well. He really carried the movie with his "let my hair down" acting and his voice-overs. Robert Downey Jr? Previously, his smarmy acting has always annoyed me. But I LIKED his smarmy acting in this movie. That's what his role called for and he was perfect for the character he portrayed. The other actors were good too but these two really shined.

There's a small but revealing moment in this movie. When Micheal Douglas and Toby McGuire are talking, a black and white movie is playing in the background. It's the Picture of Dorian Gray. The part of the movie we hear is ..."There's no such thing as a good influence. All influence is immoral. Why? Because the aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly. That's why we're here for. A man should live out his life fully and completely. Give form to every feeling. Reality to every dream...There's only one way to get rid of temptation and that's to yield to it. Resist it? So goes sick with longing for the things for which it has forbidden itself."

That is what this movie is about. Micheal Douglas denies himself nothing and gives form to every feeling and we get to enjoy the ride with him. Watching him digging for drugs in someone's personal belongings and him swallowing said drug without even trying to figure out what it is. And we get to watch him longing for the one thing that he wants. The one thing which is forbidden to him. The Chancellor's wife. While Micheal Douglas the writer English professor is watching her with longing from afar, his voice-over says (and this is my very favorite part as I am a voracious reader myself) "She was a junkie for the printed word and lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice. She loved to read. She read everything. Every spare moment."

This movie is pure seduction for someone like me who loves word play. Yes, one can enjoy this movie purely for the fun adventures and action and there is plenty to be had from beginning to end. Heck, the adventures of Vern (or is it Vernon?) and his pregnant and angelic-looking-Marilyn-Monroe-Jacket-wearing-girlfriend is worth the price of the movie itself. But beware, in the background, there is an intelligent thought and a bigger picture just waiting for you to dig even deeper into.

For every dead dog almost-found escapade, there is Robert Downey Jr. spewing deep thoughts, for every page of the Professor's manuscript that gets tossed to the wind, there is a camera pan at a cover of THE PLAGUE by Albert Camus.

Whereas the Picture of Dorian Gray ends sadly this Wonder of a movie ends happily for all - fitting and appropriate for all the characters involved. I really enjoyed this movie and all it had to offer. I am shocked that no one I knew has ever recommended this movie to me. No wonder they call movies like this Sleeper films. Heck, I LOVED this movie!

1. It co-stars:
a) Robert Downey Jr.
b) Tobey Maguire
c) Katie Holmes
d) Frances McDormand (who makes more out of her 11 minutes of screen time here than Josh Hartnett has managed in his entire career)

2. Playing way, way, way, against type Michael Douglas is Grady Tripp, a professor who smokes dope, wears bad glasses, and occasionally dresses in a pink women's gown

3. It was written by Steve Kloves, the guy who wrote & directed "The Fabulous Baker Boys"

4. It features the immortal line: "I never forget an Oola"

5. Almost a decade later and I'm writing about a movie that couldn't break 20million at the box office

Scene:
[James Leer is eating a box of white-powder donuts]
James Leer [Tobey Maguire]: These are incredible. Incredible!
Grady Tripp [Michael Douglas]: Finish the rest of that joint, James, you can start chewing on the box.

-Bookworm, Movie Nerd

Weirdly enough, after watching this film for the first time, I thought it was good, warranting maybe 3.5 to 4 stars. However, after watching the film again, I just fell in love with it. I don't know if I wasn't in the mood the first go around, but everything about the film just resonated with me after a second viewing.

I think the beauty of the film lies in its pacing; Hanson kind of takes the viewer along on a weekend littered with truly eccentric characters and wonderfully entertaining situations. I can't speak highly enough about the film, it will always be a lazy Sunday favorite, comfortable and gratifying in every way.

Not to mention the (quite possibly) greatest line of all time, "Oh Vernon, go home to your mother."

Give it a spin - I hope you enjoy the film as much as I did.

While I liked parts of this movie, and some of the atmosphere, and while Douglas' does a fairly good acting job (but still rings mostly hollow portraying a great contemp. writer), unfortunately this does not add up to a good movie... The story is quite limited, the character development is shallow, and pretentiousness mascarades as "intellectual".

There are much better movies about authors and higher education. They are worth the search, instead of accepting this fluff... even if it is somewhat entertaining.

A bit of bad luck at the box office prevented this movie from getting the hype it so richly deserves. Good luck finding roles into which Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey, Jr., slip into as effortlessly and brilliantly as they do the ones in this film. With a script that neatly repackages Michael Chabon's excellent novel for the screen, Steve Kloves (lately the screenwriter for the Harry Potter series) shows where he mastered the craft of adaptation. And director Curtis Hanson follows up the tour-de-force of L.A. Confidential with this funnier, more bizarre, and ultimately more enjoyable effort.

On one level, the movie plays out like a drug-induced dream sequence; it's almost implausible that so much would happen during a single weekend. Michael Douglas loses his wife, discovers his girlfriend (McDormand) is pregnant, flees the university at which he and his girlfriend work with his darkest and most troubled student after that student kills his girlfriend's husband's dog and steals Marilyn Monroe's wedding coat, exposes that student to pot and his literary agent of ambiguous sexuality, has his car stolen, loses a 2,000 page manuscript...

Did I mention that his girlfriend is the chancellor and her husband is the chair of the department that employs Douglas?

Yet all these events--and many more--feel very real during the movie. And not in the dreamlike way that anything makes sense while you're sleeping: this movie has the feel of truth. Other reviewers have complained that it's too weird, that each character's eccentricities pile on those of the others until it passes a level of acceptability. But people have quirks; some people are pathological liars, some people just like one kind of shoe, some people can only write in a pink bathrobe. In life we take these quirks for granted in the people we know and love; in Wonder Boys a group of people are thrown together, quirks and all, by fate and common interest and the confines of a very realistic university life. The interplay of their quirks, and the way that people who come to them with sympathetic eyes quickly rally to support one another, makes for a movie that engages, entertains, and provokes thought. If that's not what you look for in a movie, look elsewhere. If it is, prepare to add a new movie to your all-time favorites list.

This film is of that quirky, self-aware cadre that makes people easily dismiss it as pretentious, or worse, pointless. But I believe those who ascribe such notions to the movie have clearly missed the plot's subtle nuances, and the humorous undercurrent that permeates the entire theme.

Wonder Boys has that charming yet simple elegance that draws on its real but clumsy characters -- all pretty painstakingly drawn out as we almost live their fumbling lives. Professor Tripp (Douglas) in particular was very credible as just about anyone among us. James Leer's (McGuire) obsession with celebrity suicides is made light of and overcast by his pathological lying. Holmes is appropriately cast to tantalize.

Plus, the score is something to cherish thanks in no small measure to Bob Dylan's superb "Things have changed".

A good chuckle comedy with a wistful look at midlife, decisions to be made or avoided. Recommended for the discerning viewer.

Director Curtis Hanson adapts Michael Chabon`s acclaimed book and delivers a gripping dramedy about the writing process and life choices. Michael Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a famous writer and teacher that faces some weird and unusual situations during a contrived weekend. Grady tries to help James (played by the excellent Tobey Maguire), a confused yet brilliant student who is feeling unsure about his life and its future options. Together, the two "wonder boys" will come clean with themselves and redefine their main goals and priorities. But, before they reach that scenario, a couple of offbeat adventures unfold.

Curtis Hanson ("LA Confidential", "8 Mile") provides an edgy and hip movie, presenting a true-to-life (in a way) and witty plot, well-crafted characters, superb acting, stunning cinematography and an adequate score. Although this picture is a bit overrated, it still deserves some praise as it delivers a captivating and absorbing cinematic experience. However, sometimes it`s way too clever for its own good, and the story is hardly groundbreaking material. The ending is not the best, either.

Still, "Wonder Boys" works fine as an edgy Hollywood effort, expertly mixing alternative and mainstream elements to create an intelligent and entertaining piece of filmaking, courtesy of Curtis Hanson`s ecclectism (an underrated director, by the way).

Deserves a look.

Michael Douglas gives the greatest performance of his career as a bumbling, washed up writer-professor who in one wild, wacky weekend, offers advice, guides, teaches, looses, and gains, and in the end, discovers himself. The problem with most films about supposedly great writers, is that the writing can't stand up to the hype. Finally, a film with writing that makes you believe the characters may be as talented as everyone thinks they are. Maybe you have to be a writer, or at least have read a few books, to appreciate this film, which is, after all, about writing: it's pain, anxieties, frustrations, insecurities, impotencies, and ultimately, exhiliration. The characters are well-developed, and universally well-acted. Unpredictable and funny, only marred by a Hollywood ending that grossly cops out. Wonder Boys is a unique film, not for your average movie goer who loved Armageddon, but for those who actually enjoy thinking about what the heck they're doing with their lives. Great ensemble cast; perhaps the smartest movie of 2000.

It pretty much all takes over a long weekend of debauchery of one form or another. Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is a laboring novelist and teacher at a college in Pittsburgh, author Chabon's favorite place to write about (witness: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh). He's working on this novel-in-progress, swearing to his agent (with a transvestite date in tow when he swoops into town for an award banquet) that it's nearly finished when, in reality, it's anything but. He's got a bazillion pages, but the book just isn't going anywhere, certainly not toward any planned or near-at-hand conclusion.
Tripp also has a wife who announces she's leaving him and a mistress (chancellor of the school, as well as the wife of Grady's boss) who tells him she's pregnant. Add to the mix a sexy student who shacks up at Grady's house and the wonderful, brilliant, and horribly confused student played by Tobey Maguire - whose best scene, according to my 19yo son is when, in a marijuana fog, he gets the munchies, lifts the lid of a candy jar, and utters an unforgettable warble of unmitigated joy when he discovers lemon drops.
Then there's a blind dog that ends up dead in the trunk of Grady's car and a gorgeous jacket once owned by Marilyn Monroe, and, and, and...
Wow.

This has turned out to be one of my favorite films of all time. Every single main character is memorable, as well are the supporting characters.

I am a Michael Douglas fan, and I believe that this is his best role. I could not imagine anyone else playing Grady Tripp; same goes for Tobey Maguire as James Leer. Robert Downey, Jr. IS Crabtree.

Much of the humor is subtle and not overly obvious, not is it humorous to the characters in the situation.

This is one of the types of films that has it all: great characters, great story, great acting, great cinematography, great directing, and great music (which, by the way, fits in perfectly with each scene-- look at the scenes specifically with the Neil Young and Leonard Cohen songs).

This is definitely one of the best films that's come out of the past decade, and I'm sure it'll remain a favorite for years.