Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Arianna Moses
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
thisanant
Equipped with a lot of talented actors and maybe the best performance of Michael Douglas , this is one of a kind movie , great story and chemistry among cast , fully hilarious . watchable multiple times
catt-69275
This is a great movie in the same genre with Cohen brothers and Richard Linklater. If you like witty dialogue, comically brilliant situations and excellent acting, watch this movie. Oh, if you like silly story lines and graphic sex and violence, as well as, a complete absence of vocabulary beyond the word "f...",give it a miss. It is rare these days to find a movie that can stimulate the mind and still inspire laughter. It seems we have either in your face violence that is so graphic it turns the stomach. I often wonder if there are so many people who know so little about the sex act that they have to have it blatantly exhibited on the screen. Whatever happened to imagination? You don't have to be an intellectual to enjoy this movie, just have good taste
Turfseer
There were great expectations for 'Wonder Boys'. You can even hear Michael Douglas say on the DVD extras that this was an opportunity to play a more substantial part, much different from what he terms "prince of darkness" roles he had recently been known for. Nonetheless, here was a film that was released a SECOND time, after it initially bombed at the box office (the second release, by the way, fared no better). Perhaps the biggest reason for 'Wonder Boys' failure, was the source material: the novel of the same name, written by the young wunderkind, Michael Chabon. Michiko Kakutani perhaps said it best, describing the novel in her 1995 NY Times review, as "silly and verging on camp." Although I disagree with her assessment that the film had a "split personality," with the story being also "touching and melancholy."Screenwriter Steve Kloves' faithfully adapts Chabon's story and retains the same sorry schematics: in a nutshell, the protagonist, Professor Grady Tripp, has no significant antagonist to play off of. This might work better in a novel, where the characters' internal arc is highlighted, but in a full-length feature film, it's deadly. Tripp is basically the pot-smoking loser who can't replicate his earlier literary success and also can't decide whether he wants to commit to the University Chancellor, Sara Gaskell, now pregnant with his child. Gaskell is married to Tripp's boss, Walter, chairman of the English Department.Peripheral characters seem to drift in and out of view during the film with little or no identifiable purpose including a young Katie Holmes as Hannah Green, both Tripp's student and boarder as well as Tripp's literary agent, Terry Crabtree (played by a younger Robert Downey Jr.), whose career is also falling apart (mainly due to Tripp's inability to come up with a new novel).The bulk of 'Wonder Boys' concerns Tripp's relationship with the dissolute James Leer (a very, very young Tobey Maguire), one of Tripp's students who aspires to be a writer. A singular event ruins the entire movie when Leer shoots Walter's dog and the bumbling Tripp places the carcass in the trunk of his car for most of the rest of the film. Somehow, Chabon and Kloves believes that the shooting of the poor pooch is supposed to be funny. My theory is that talk about this most unpleasant event got around and accounted for the very poor response at the box office. Clue for future film scenarists: don't allow one of your main characters to kill a dog, if you want people to like your movie!!!The rest of the machinations in the film are only briefly worth mentioning. Suffice it to say that after Leer shoots the Gaskell's pet, he also makes off with the Chairman's precious Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. At a certain point, Terry ends up in bed with James and then Tripp's car turns out to be stolen and is repossessed by its rightful owner (a crazy black dude who resembles a cross between James Brown and Little Richard). The repulsive Leer is saved after Tripp makes a deal with Walter, arranging for Terry to publish his book, described as a "critical exploration of the union of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe and its function in American mythopoetics", tentatively titled The Last American Marriage." The dig at academia could have been developed quite a bit more, but the scenarists here fail to go in that direction. And as for Tripp, the loss of his manuscript signals the shattering of all of his illusions.Tripp's ultimate fate is indicative of Chabon's (and Kloves') failure to do anything creative with their protagonist. Tripp, the perennial procrastinator, finally decides to make the obvious commitment (which we can see a mile away from the very beginning), where he decides to shack up with Sara and play the responsible role of the good father (a significantly SENTIMENTAL ending for a film billed as some sort of black comedy).Granted, Michael Douglas does the best he can in a role where his character simply doesn't develop. At least (as he says), this time he's not playing the "prince of darkness." The rest of the cast also do the best they can with the limited material but the chief highlight here is merely seeing how notable actors (Downey, Maguire, Holmes and McDormand) looked as their pre-9/11 selves.'Wonder Boys' truly has little to say about human nature since its quirky characters are distantly related to how real people think and feel. Most disappointing is the film's campy humor, which sometimes veers into excessively unpleasant terrain (yes, I'll bring up the dead dog one more time!). Remember that many films with an 'indie' appellation, do not necessarily come close to 'art', despite assorted critics' claims to the contrary.
kenjha
An English professor's wife leaves him while he carries on an affair with a married colleague and tries to overcome writer's block. The characters are interesting and the academic setting is nicely evoked. Unfortunately, the film runs out of steam about two-thirds of the way through. Douglas heads a good cast, and he gives a terrific performance as the professor who is having a very bad weekend. Maguire plays a genius student who is is not all there. It's not a bad performance, but Maquire seems to play the same character in every movie he makes. McDormand and Downey are fine as Douglas's lover and literary agent, respectively.
