Review rated by 13 Ciao members on average: very helpful
Michael Douglas, Toby Maguire and Robert Downey Jr are the leading lights in this very watchable intelligent ‘mellow drama’ about writers, education, love and a dead dog. Bought the DVD because there wasn’t much else on the shelves at Blockbuster that evening. For the technically minded (and obsessed) the format is 16:9 and has little else but the movie and a scene selector to keep the trigger happy ….happy.
To the movie, it all starts in a rainy dismal Pittsburgh University Campus on the occasion of a workshop weekend for writers and the like. Michael Douglas takes the role of Grady Tripp, Grady is a frustrated university lecturer and a writer of some previous note who people fear has hit a block in his writing and his life in general.
The weekend sees him trying to straighten his life and writing problems this is not helped by the fact that his 3rd wife has just left him and he is responsible for making the Chancellor (or Dean whatever’s) wife pregnant. Oh and yes he is in love with her but its complicated, you have to watch the film to find out why. Interestingly the Chancellor is played by a wooden John Boy (ex Waltons). Also you never actually see his missing 3rd wife as she has gone away for the weekend with a chum, but you do meet her parents mid-movie and the house and bedroom she grew up in …which is nice.
Maguire plays a dark but rising star student who is having trouble with life and everything, Downey Jr plays Michael Douglas’es gay and confused publisher who is on hard times and needs a best seller from his client to rescue his sorry career. He will exploit anything that moves to get his job back on track and the weekend word-fest presents the opportunity to get close to his prey.
There you have it, the three main characters. There are plenty more but you’ll have to buy, pay-per-view, rent or watch the movie at a friends to find out. Marylin Monroe also makes an appearance or rather her clothes and photograph do.
You get the impression that everyone in the movie has been given the chance to play someone different that they have never been able to do in the past. Nice experiment that actually works.
Anyway find a rainy Saturday or Sunday afternoon, pour the hot chocolate and watch the movie.
the hero in one weekend than would bother most of us our whole lives. Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is an aging one-novel wunderkind at a small Pittsburgh col...
few of the crises piling up like a logjam in this often hilarious story of bright promise gone awry. During a single hectic weekend college professor Grady Tripp (Mic...
few of the crises piling up like a logjam in this often hilarious story of bright promise gone awry. During a single hectic weekend college professor Grady Tripp (Mic...
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20.09.2003 17:09
I recently watched this. I really liked it. It was very different from anything I've seen before. I recommend this to others too. Best Wishes, Lucy x
16.05.2003 23:41
I liked this movie too - v funny in parts (in a sick way!).
07.11.2001 20:03
good op