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WONDER BOYS
Movie Review
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Like Joe Bpftsk, the mournful loser in the old L'il Abner cartoon who trudged the world with a dark, curdling cloud over his head, Michael Douglas' failed husband- writer- teacher character in Wonder Boys brings rain and misfortune with him everywhere he goes.
When we first meet Pittsburgh professor Grady Tripp, his wife has split. Mistress Sara, the department head's wife, is pregnant with his child. Grady's agent, in Pennsylvania for a writers' conference with a two-storey transvestite, is hoping against hope that his troubled client has finally finished the sequel to his prize-winning debut novel. Then there's the two writing students who hope to rub against their hero enough times to summon a genie bearing the secret to literary success.
All Grady wants, however, is to be left alone long enough to get at the baggie of Maui powie in the glove compartment of his car. Unfortunately, the dope only makes Grady's storm cloud hungry for more chaos. Winter rain and snow chase him down from the Appalachians. Then he's mauled by his boss' blind dog, Poe, and his car is stolen. Before long the dog is shot, as, seemingly, are the former wonder boy's chances for romantic and academic tenure.
Yes, Wonder Boys is a comic picaresque. And it's not hard to figure out why director Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Steve Kloves were attracted to the Michael Chabon novel on which the film is based. Like Grady Tripp, both filmmakers have had to deal with the challenge of following up a huge critical success. This is Hanson's first film since the brilliantly assured L.A. Confidential. Kloves was once a wonder boy himself; in his mid-20s, he had Michelle Pfeiffer making love to a piano in his directorial debut, The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), a remarkably nimble and affecting drama that showed real affection for and understanding of the bruised loners who are drawn to showbiz.
Then Kloves did a Grady Tripp, producing nothing of consequence for more than a decade. That's a fate Hanson must've feared as he contemplated a follow-up to his masterpiece crime drama. That he has opted here for a contemplation on epic failure can't be considered a surprise. Perhaps because they secretly consider themselves frauds, American wonder boys often celebrate their success with tortured examinations of failed men. (Think of Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, after Citizen Kane; or Deer Park, Mailer's follow-up to The Naked and the Dead.)
The first good bit of news about Hanson's Wonder Boys is that the director hasn't lost his casting eye. Like L.A. Confidential, his new film abounds with sharp performances from interesting actors. Robert Downey Jr. has great fun as Grady's priapic gay agent. Hollywood's most intriguing young actor, Tobey Maguire, is properly enigmatic as a morose student. Frances McDormand brings more than might be expected to the waiting woman role. And Rip Torn does an amusing turn as a foghorn Hemingway type. In their sterling company, star Douglas, who hadn't really unclenched his jaw or buttocks in a film since man-eaters Glenn Close, Kathleen Turner and Sharon Stone made a tag-team meal out of him in successive movies 10-12 years ago, relaxes to give an effortlessly charming performance.
Another bonus: The film has a winning, way off-beat humour that, like Grady's weed, seems wholly organic, as opposed to sitcom grown. The punchlines never seem telegraphed. One of the film's most satisfying laughs comes when Torn's pontificating lecturer addresses an auditorium of solemn, would-be writers on the importance of developing sound, professional work habits. ("Like Whitman," he says, "I worship at the shrine of formal construction.") Maguire's character, James Leer, watches the author as if in a stupor. "How does a writer travel," the lecturer drones on, "from the water's edge of an idea to the far shore of accomplishment." That final inanity somehow jolts the student out of his lingering theatrical depression, exciting a shrill, delighted child-like scream.
Like many directors out to impress the world with a follow-up to a walloping success, Hanson has clearly laboured over small details to make sure he gets everything perfect. Take, for example, a sequence that finds Grady and Leer in the department head's bedroom, breaking into the academic's prize Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe collection. When Leer, trembling with anticipation, draws close and reaches for Marilyn's wedding gown, we see the young man's breath play like a ruffling breeze along the white fur collar.
While Wonder Boys gets most, if not all, of the small things right, it never quite adds up to the frantic comic masterpiece that Hanson and Kloves intend. For one thing, the filmmakers too often indulge their wayward characters, rationalizing their moral laziness and self-destructive behaviour as signs of above-the-fray nobility.
The film needs more conflict. And passion. (What a shame the Douglas-McDormand relationship isn't explored more fruitfully.) Only when Grady stumbles on a frank, tender character sketch Leer has written about his favourite teacher does the film's hero come into sharp focus.
Still, as melancholic wallows go, Wonder Boys has much to offer. The comedy is sure and constant. The film's players, particularly Downey Jr. and Maguire, are thoroughly fine company. And cinematographer Dante Spinotti has done a wondrous job delineating shades of grey in the Pennsylvania winter. If nothing else, Hanson can always lay claim to having made the greatest film ever produced in Pittsburgh.
Copyright © National Post
