Hey folks, Harry here with our man in Chi-Town, Capone chiming in on Curtis Hanson's follow up film to L.A. CONFIDENTIAL... although in a completely different genre. This is the film that will signal whether or not L.A. CONFIDENTIAL was a hiccup or the rebirth of a startling career. There are some spoilers below in Capone's review... but.. not too many, besides, it really sounds wonderful..
Hey, Harry. Capone in Chicago here, and I'm on a press-screening roll. I sat in with some the Windy City's finest and smelliest critics last Friday for a look at Curtis Hanson's WONDER BOYS. I saw some early-cut reviews on your site a few months ago, but this was definitely the final edit.It's good to see Michael Douglas back at the top of his game. I didn't realize how much I'd missed him until I saw WONDER BOYS, a strange but highly watchable dramatic comedy about what and who it takes to survive a mid-life crisis. In his first role since A PERFECT MURDER, Douglas remembers what it is to create a fully realized character in Grady Tripp, a professor and author who has been struggling for about five years with writer's block after a highly successful first novel. After a succession of failed marriages, his latest romantic interest rests in the his university's chancellor (Frances McDormand), who just happens to be married to Grady's boss (played very well by John Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas). In one of the film's early scenes at a cocktail reception, McDormand (who does a lot with a somewhat underwritten role) announces that she is pregnant with Grady's child. Not surprisingly, he doesn't respond how she'd like and he end up screwing up the last positive thing in his life. I should say at this point that you've never scene Michael Douglas look or act like he does in WONDER BOYS. He looks horrible. His hair is a mess, his jowls look extra saggy, he wears his eye glasses on the edge of his nose, he has anxiety-related fainting spells, and more often than not he dressed in a pink robe. This in no glamour role for him; he is not the hero or the so-bad-he's-good predator. He's a miserable guy with not a lot going right for him. Things start to change when he gets to know one of the students in his writing class, played against type by Tobey Maguire. He's an introverted, dark and bizarre kid who says he lives at the bus station because he got kicked out of his apartment. The film doesn't have a story so much as a series of small adventures shared by the older and younger writers. They involve a dead dog in the trunk of Douglas' car, the jacket Marilyn Monroe wore at her wedding, a 1600-plus-page novel, and lots and lots of weed. Also thrown into the mix are Robert Downey Jr., very funny in the role of Grady's editor, and "Dawson's Creek"'s Katie Holmes as another writing student that rents a room from Grady and half-heartedly attempts to seduce him. Despite the top-notch talent here, WONDER BOYS has the intimacy of a small film. Not much actually happens; there are no exotic locales or designer clothes. There are several small mysteries about some of the characters that are cleverly revealed by the end, but there's no high drama, no deep-dark secrets that only a sexy psychiatrist can uncover. What we're given are a series of quirky but believable set backs and let downs followed by an interesting and (dare I say) uplifting payoff. The director is Curtis Hanson, who did such an amazing and stylized take on L.A. CONFIDENTIAL a couple years ago. WONDER BOYS couldn't be more different that new noir masterpiece, but it's just as satisfying. Don't go in thinking WONDER BOYS is going to rock your world or get your blood pumping, but it does get you thinking good thoughts.
Capone
