October 16 2000

As Wonder Boys developed I kept wondering just how far it was going to travel along the American Beauty path. And as far as entertainment goes, Wonder Boys is in the same league as that huge hit American Beauty.

We have a middle aged unhappy man called Grady Trip (Michael Douglas, Wall Street, The American President) hopefully on a journey of self discovery, trying, vaguely, to break out of the fuzzy, self destructive haze he has absorbed.

Grady is a literature professor who hasn’t published for seven years. He’s enveloped in marijuana, is having an affair with Sara the Chancellor of his university (Frances McDormand, Fargo), can’t get his next book finished and this could go either way.

In American Beauty the Kevin Spacey character reached his epiphany but was then cut down. I urge you to see Wonder Boys to see what happens. Will Grady survive? I certainly won’t tell you here! Compared to American Beauty though, Wonder Boys is languid, muted by Pennsylvanian snow, but both are intelligent and thought provoking.

The cast is terrific and they are well directed. This is a film where it all hangs together. It was directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential, The River Wild, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle) and written by Steve Kloves who also penned The Fabulous Baker Boys.

Grady has one hell of a weekend. An annual literary festival is in progress, his wife leaves him and his lover drops a bombshell. A dog gets very upset and his literary agent Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr.) turns up with a transvestite. But the events in Wonder Boys are always less important than the characters.

Grady also has an available attractive young woman to consider, played in Wonder Boys by Katie Holmes (Disturbing Behaviour, Go, The Ice Storm).

I’m not one to make a lot of noise at the movies but Wonder Boy’s had enough dark humour to have me laugh out loud a few times and most notably to gasp "Oh No, Oh No!" in dismay during one particularly poignant scene. Now that’s a visit to the cinema!

4 Lost Novel Flys