Director Curtis Hanson exploded on the scene in 1996 with the Academy Award-winning L.A. Confidential. That movie, starring Russell Crowe and Kevin Spacey (amongst a host of others) was a fantastic neo-noir film that was both tightly constructed and beautifully shot. But before that, Hanson had made more conventional thrillers like River Wild and Hand that Rocks the Cradle. The question on the minds of many filmgoers was which Curtis Hanson would show up in his new movie Wonder Boys? As it turns out, someone very different.

Wonder Boys stars Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp, a college professor and author who's hit a crossroads in life. As we follow Grady to class on a cold Friday morning, we learn (via a voiceover) that his young wife has just left him. Later that evening, he'll get another heavy piece of news when Sara Gaskell, the university's chancellor (Frances McDormand, Fargo) tells him that she's pregnant with his baby. She's ready to leave her husband, who just happens to be the chair of Grady's department, if Grady will commit to her. But with everything swirling around him, he's not so sure.

That's not all that's restless in Tripp's life, though. Seven years after the phenomenal success of his book, he's still working on the follow-up, and his editor (in a wonderful turn from Robert Downey, Jr.) is coming into town to check up on him. Then there's James Leer (Tobey Maguire, Cider House Rules), a troubled but brilliant young writer who's taking Grady's class but wants to move into his house, and Hannah Green (Katie Holmes, television's Dawson's Creek), a young writer who's living in Grady's house but wants to move into his bedroom.

The opening fifteen minutes of the movie is a fabulous introduction to each of these characters. Using a voiceover from Douglas that's both informative and interesting, the script from Steve Kloves effortlessly shows how each character fits into Grady's small, college-town world. Even more effective, though, is Hanson's direction. Using a steadily moving, often swirling camera, he's able to portray the restlessness in Tripp's soul in a way that's palpable to the audience. This effect also makes the still moments--a wonderful conversation between Grady and Sara laid out on a bed, Grady showing James a piece of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia--even more powerful. These are combined with an emphasis on shadows and rainy nights (a long leap from the bright sheen of L.A. Confidential) to perfectly capture the mood of this pivotal weekend.

And then there's the climax, which happens surprisingly early in the film. James kills a dog, which sets the rest of the action in motion and unfortunately distracts from many of the storylines Hanson has so effortlessly created. Instead of focusing on these interesting people and convoluted relationships, there are policemen, long rides and a sense of aimlessness. As my friend Garth put it, we need more Katie Holmes, Frances McDormand and Robert Downey, Jr.

Which is not to say that Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire aren't good. In fact, Douglas gives one of the best performances of his career. His weary, stubble-faced professor, dressed in an old robe and worn coat, is pitch-perfect as a man faced with both opportunities and setbacks. If the Academy didn't have such short memories, I'd bet Douglas would be looking at an acting nomination next winter. And Maguire gives another strong performance as a budding writer whose stories transcend the printed page.

No, to say we need more of Holmes, McDormand and Downey is to acknowledge that the strength of Wonder Boys is how all of these characters interact, that what the audience wants to know is how Douglas will resolve his woman troubles, how he's going to finish his book, and what's going to happen to James. Instead we get a lot of dead dog humor (some of it pretty funny) and rambling conversations that don't exactly go anywhere.

Late in the film, Hannah is reading through Grady's enormous manuscript and remarks that it was as if Grady couldn't make the necessary choices. The same could be said of Hanson. I haven't read the novel this movie is based on, but my guess is that many of these subplots are more fully expanded in the book. Hanson and screenwriter Kloves try to pack too many of them into the film, though, never fully resolving any of them. And the ending is just too tidy for my taste.

This isn't to say that Wonder Boys isn't enjoyable or worth seeing. There are some very funny moments, the acting, particularly Douglas', is impeccable, and the cinematography by Dante Spinotti (Insider, L.A. Confidential) is perfect for the story. Hanson's first foray out of the thriller genre may not be a complete success, but it still bodes well for the future. 

J. Robert Parks 2/28/2000

Is the movie honorable?  B
In that it starts in a community where nobody seems to care about right and wrong, yes, the movie is honorable, because it moves the central character through this mess to a place of testing and moral decision.  In the end, in spite of the chaos around him, Professor Grady Tripp just might learn something about taking responsibility and acting like a grownup.

How effective is the film at what it sets out to do?  B
There are so many problems in Grady's life, some his own fault, that things seem rather bleak.  The film doesn't seem too worried about the recklessness of Grady's students or the improprieties of his friends. But by demonstrating just how things will go from bad to worse if Grady doesn't wise up and start behaving responsibly, it does point him in the right direction.

Is the film worth our time, money, and effort to see it? B
 For grownups only.  If you've attended a liberal university, you'll find much that is familiar in this context. It would be easy to become judgmental and condemn this film for being a tribute to reckless and lazy people, but that would be a rash judgment.  Movies like this can teach us to "look closer" and see charming and likeable people instead of walking moral insults. I liked it because it reminded me of my college experience, my damaged friends and damaged professors alike, who learned to love me in spite of my own reckless and foolish choices, and who grew right alongside me.  We all have our moments of brilliance right alongside our moments of folly. God forbid that we lose our ability to see the people behind their problems.

Is the film artfully made? A
Cinematography, acting, scripting, soundtrack... all marvelous, in balance, and working together to make this an unusually graceful and generous film. It reminded me most of Nobody's Fool, in which Paul  Newman found another role he was born to play, as an aging fool in a community of charming losers.  Michael Douglas here gives us his greatest performance, his most complicated and charming character, and made this campus community a place I'd love to visit.

Did I enjoy it?  B+
While the screenplay stumbles in the closing minutes and wraps things up a little too nicely for me, I was impressed with this movie's avoidance of convention and cliche.  The writers keep from turning boiling down this tangle of errors into a "statement".  Like real life on university campuses, you're surrounded by people who are searching and experimenting with everything in their journeys toward the truth. Some of them will see the truth, and they'll give up their folly... they'll bloom. Others will see the truth and turn away in fear, clutching at their habits and their insufficient rituals.

These characters are not stereotypes. Grady Tripp is an interesting 60's leftover, still tugging on marijuana joints and hanging out at parties where sexual exploration in the extra bedrooms is just part of the scenery; but he also cares about writing, he cares about his students, and he's mature enough to say "no" when an attractive young writer throws herself at him.   I really couldn't believe it.  In a year when American Beauty claimed to be groundbreaking by replaying Lolita without the moral consequences , here is a character who restored some hope in me that, yes, some grownups still understand that there is right and wrong, and that their carnal urges are better served if they are controlled rather than indulged.

Mel Gibson, take note.  Harrison Ford, look at this very very closely.   You needn't stay in the narrow confines of your past roles.  You can step out.  You can break new ground.  You can re-invent yourself and remain interesting.   Paul Newman did it, in The Hudsucker Proxy and Nobody's Fool after all.  And now Michael Douglas has done it.

For years, Douglas has been our most dependable sleazeball, a suit-and-tie mephistopheles with a flair for dangerous women and big money.  Hopefully, those days are gone for good.  Douglas has found a new character, a challenging role, and he's made it the most interesting and engaging character he's ever played. And Wonder Boys may be his best film.  It took some humility and good humor to play Professor Grady Tripp.  The performance shows Doublas aging gracefully... and willingly, an accomplishment that only Newman and Gene Hackman have achieved in recent years.

In fact, there are a lot of similarities between Nobody's Fool and Wonder Boys. In Nobody's Fool, Paul Newman played a foolish but warm-hearted and endearing old man who learns that it's never too late to turn your life around, to do something meaningful.  The movie was far more interested in characterization than teaching, though, and this made the lessons within all the more powerful, because we believed in the characters so fully.  It's a great film. Wonder Boys makes the same smart move.  Unpredictable, full of revealing details about each character, and smartly written, it draws us into a specific community, full of individuals that refuse to fit into cookie-cutter models.

English professor Grady Tripp is an eccentric 60's survivor who is more comfortable hanging out with his students than he is at the formal English Department events. In his home office, before the typewriter, he wears the pink bathrobe of an ex-wife. Occasionally he pulls on his black stocking cap and strolls out to the front porch for a puff of marijuana.  He lives sloppily, moving through multiple marriages, disrespecting the establishment, and awkwardly bearing the cross of fame that he found when he published an award-winning novel, The Arsonist's Daughter.  But that day in the sun was seven years ago.  His agent is hounding him for the follow-up, which is now thousands of pages long with no end in sight.  And Grady just keeps showing up for work, sharing one of his two passions with his students... the love of good writing.

His other passion is secret... he's in love with the wife of the arrogant chairman of the English Department.  Thanks to Grady, she's pregnant now, and he's facing a tough choice: let her abort the child and keep her marriage, or take her up on her unspoken invitation to rescue her from the unhappy marriage and then raise the child.

As his students grope for meaning and order in the chaos of their lives, experimenting with drugs, sex, and nihilism, Grady tries to ignore his own waywardness, watching everyone else stumble into and out of trouble.  One night at an English Department party, his most promising student, James Leer (Tobey Maguire), starts slipping down the slope to suicide.  Grady intervenes... in the most casual way.  But nobody can escape the inevitable consequences of moral apathy. Grady soon finds that he's facing more consequences than he ever imagined, and he and the boy Leer are in a stolen car and running from the law.

The movie might have, at this point, become a wacky comedy of errors.   What sets it apart is that Director Curtis Hanson refuses to back away from his three-dimensional characters.  The comedy stays convincing.  Like the rare and wonderful film Midnight Run, one wild caper after another goes by without losing the film's firm grip on the reality of the situation.  Tripp's bisexual agent soon joins the adventure, pressuring Tripp to finish his novel.  Robert Downey Jr. is brilliantly cast as the slimey bisexual agent Terry Crabtree, who soon is investigating the publishing potential of young Leer even as he prods the boy toward homosexual experimentation.  Grady can't believe what's happening.  Sneaking around the campus and the town, he slowly finds that his indifference and his infidelities have drawn him to the brink of disaster.  Like Newman in Nobody's Fool, he's a fool alright, and he needs Aimee Mann to come sing her song from the movie Magnolia: "It's not going to stop/ Until you wise up."

Director Curtis Hanson's last film was the tightly-wound suspense thriller L.A.Confidential.  This is so entirely different, and still so accomplished, that actors will start lining up for his future projects if they're not already.  What drew him to Michael Chabon's novel about academia after a film about corrupt cops and Hollywood sleaze?  Perhaps there are some common threads.  Here is another world where appearances are deceiving, where the accomplished and successful live lives of secret sins, where even a simple good deed is a complicated and risky maneuver. Otherwise, this film is the tortoise to L.A. Confidential's hare; it's strengths are in its leisurely tangents and in conversations after-hours rather than in fisticuffs and macho confrontations.  Dante Spinotti's camerawork is so inventive that even the slower chapters keep us busy investigating the busy lived-in rooms, the student backpacks bulging with details and secrets.

Unfortunately, the last fifteen minutes of the film finally let the sense of reality slip from its grasp.  The conclusion shows too much of a transformation, too happy a result.  In a situation as tangled as this, nothing perfect and happy can result, only growth, a deep sigh, and a resolution to do better next time.  But I find it hard to come down too hard on Wonder Boys.  I feel that I've been privileged to step into another community and see people making changes in their lives for the better. Among the numerous satires, comedies, and dramas of the last few years, Wonder Boys is a film of rare sincerity and hope.  If it had come out three weeks earlier,  maybe we would have seen Michael Douglas walk away with a well-deserved Oscar.   Will the Academy remember this film a year from now?

PARENTAL NOTE:  Caution.  This film is for grownups only.  It includes frank talk about sexual matters, portrays casual drug use, and includes scenes of mild violence.

Jeffrey Overstreet