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Professor Grady Tripp is a published author, once a wonder boy, but is now struggling to finish the book he has been writing for seven years. His editor, Terry Crabtree, arrives to chase him on the same day that his wife leaves him. And his affair with the married Dean of his college is coming to a head. Life is to get even more complicated when one of his students shoots the Dean's husband's dog at a party and a female student who is boarding with him comes on to him. Can he sort out everyone else's problems and manage to continue his own career at the same time?
Michael Douglas plays Grady Tripp, in a role which is pleasantly different from anything else I have seen him do. Tripp is scruffy, flirtatious, lazy and has a liking for the odd spliff, yet somehow manages to be extremely likeable. I don't suppose for a minute that it pushed Douglas very hard, but I found his performance far more natural than many of his others and certainly a lot less pretentious. I also loved his on-screen relationship with Robert
Downey Jr, who plays Terry Crabtree - the pair of them looked as if they had been friends for years (maybe they have?). Downey Jr is great as Terry, although I can imagine that if you are not a fan, he could be annoying. He always seems to burst onto the screen with great enthusiasm and much face-pulling - he really made me laugh.
In contrast, Tobey Maguire, who plays one of Tripp's students and has a key role in the film, has a face that barely seems to move. I have never noticed this before, but when he speaks, his lips move and that's it - there is nothing else going on facially. I actually have a lot of time for him as an actor though and this is a good performance - the blank expression fits very well with his character, James Leer. James is a troubled young man who obviously has a great deal going on under the surface, and as Tripp is all too aware, he is a talented writer. Frances McDormand plays the Dean, with whom Tripp is having an affair - she isn't on-screen all that much, but when she is, she is a pleasure to watch.
There is one role that is, as far as I am concerned, a total waste of time, and that is the student boarding with Tripp played by Katie Holmes. I really did not get her character at all - she obviously has a crush on Tripp, but nothing develops - in fact, her character as a whole doesn't develop. Virtually every scene that involved her could have been deleted and it would have made absolutely no difference to the film at all. I don't actually see this as a fault of Holmes - I think her character was badly written and probably existed just to give the male audience some eye candy.
The film as a whole is a rather strange one. As I realised when I started watching it, I have seen the film before, but the storyline is so unmemorable that I had more or less forgotten it. It is more or less a day in the life of...in that it is quite dull - there are moments of excitement, but they are all brief and not that exciting - the shooting of a dog (not in detail) and the crashing of a car are probably the ones that stand out the most. For the first half an hour, I wasn't really sure where the film was going, then I realised that that was apparently the point - it wasn't really going anywhere. The ending does tie things up and give the film some kind of aim, but there is an awful lot of meandering around before we get there.
That isn't to say that the film is a bad one though. It does have moments of brilliance - usually involving Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr - and I certainly never felt like turning it off. And it is very quirky; at no point did I ever know what was going to happen next, with people doing the unexpected, and the unexpected happening at every point. The humour is not laugh out loud - apart from the odd moment with Robert Downey Jr - but is slightly dark, just as I like it. I just felt that the film rather lost its way, as if the director had decided to let the actors improvise their way through the film.
There is a rating of 15, which is probably about right because of the references to drugs and homosexuality - Crabtree and James have a fling during the course of the film. There is also the shooting of a dog, which although not at all graphic, is not very pleasant - I didn't enjoy watching Tripp handling the dog's body afterwards.
This isn't a film that I'm going to add to my top 100 favourite films or anything - I think the fact that I had seen it before but couldn't remember the plot speaks volumes - it just isn't that memorable a film. If you're a fan of any of the main actors, then it is worth a watch, but don't expect to be wowed. Recommended.
The DVD is available from play.com for £2.99, but my copy came from Asda, where it is £2 at the time of writing.
Production Year: 2004 - Drama - Director: Nick Cassavetes - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over, 12 years and over - Starring: Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, Gena Rowlands
Wonder Boysis one of those films in which more twists and turns disrupt the life of the ... more
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...
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An unfinished novel a stolen car a murdered pet and a failing marriage are just a few of ... more
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...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
An unfinished novel a stolen car a murdered pet and a failing marriage are just a few of ... more
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...
Postage & Packaging: £0.00 Availability: 3-5 working days
Advantages: The sharp script and lead performance from Micheal Douglas, well supported by a fine cast. Disadvantages: This won't appeal to some and can drag in a few places.
Mercury 18.06.2001 (18.06.2001)
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Review of Wonder Boys (DVD)
Advantages: Comical, interesting and enjoyable. Disadvantages: Loose ends intentionally left at end of film may leave some viewers feeling slightly cheated.
michaelcrook 18.04.2001 (16.04.2001)
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Review of Wonder Boys (DVD)
Advantages: Some good performances. Handful of laughs. Downey and Maguire. Disadvantages: Boring at times. Feels it wants to be zany but instead tries for too much sentiment. Bad ending.
Darius 27.05.2001 ·
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Wonder Boys (DVD)
![Wonder Boys [DVD] [2000]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78523971.jpg "Wonder Boys [DVD] [2000]")
Oct 17th, 2008
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