Herald rating: * * * *
Running time: 112 mins
Rental: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
So you thought he couldn't act, huh? You thought his mind was on other things? Michael Douglas, who has become better known for his extra-cinema activities in recent years, goes back to his craft and proves you wrong.
In Wonder
Boys he plays Grady Tripp, 50-ish, an outstanding student who became an English professor, wrote a good novel seven years ago and now seems to have writer's block.
The movie follows him around the Pittsburgh campus during a winter literary festival. His wife (never seen) has just left him.
Walter Gaskell (Richard Thomas) is head of the English department; Walter's wife, Sara (Frances McDormand), is head of the university and Grady's lover.
His editor, Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr), is in town for the festival and asking where Grady's new book is. He has been working on it for so long that the manuscript runs over 2000 pages and is nowhere near finished. Q (Rip Torn), a famous writer, is the guest speaker.
He is more interested in two of Grady's students: James Leer (Tobey Maguire), a moody, compulsive liar who has written a novel; Hannah Green (Katie Holmes), Grady's tenant.
With this many characters and this many interwoven stories, how to describe Wonder Boys? The publicity would have it that it's "a funny and touching story about a weekend on campus that contains dead dogs, Monroe memorabilia, a stolen car, sex, adultery, pregnancy, guns, dope and cops, but is not about any of those things."
Which is right, but you could call it a gentle, off-centre kind-of-comedy that'll appeal to those who liked, say, Robert Altman's Short Cuts or last year's rambler, Magnolia.
Which ain't bad company for Douglas and director Curtis Hanson (his first since L. A. Confidential, for which he and cowriter Brian Helgeland won the Oscar).
