Wonder Boys 2000
I’d been wanting to see this one for a while. It made Ebert’s top 10 list last year. I guess I should have been a little suspicious because he plugged it over and over again, indicating that it had gone from being his opinion to a cause. It was released last year, did poorly, pulled, and then re-released later in the year in hopes of jogging Oscar’s memory. Of course it did poorly again. I blame this mostly on the stupid title.
The first hour or more of this movie is really good as we get to know some of the main characters. By about the middle I had really warmed up to it. But then it started downhill fast. By the end small cracks in the movie had become gaping chasms and there seemed less and less of a point to the whole thing.
Still it was pretty good with another good performance by Frances McDormand, who actually looks pretty good in her supporting role as a cheating wife and college chancellor. Michael Douglas is good as the troubled writer/professor having the affair with McDormand. Tobey McGuire plays his role stiff, but I think that was part of the point. But Robert Downey Jr. as the gay publisher is a little annoying.
I think by the end I started to realize that this must have been a script by the guy played by Tobey McGuire, a talented young writer and student of Douglas’. But the youth or inexperience shows as the whole thing spins out of control and we go crashing into an ending complete with the worn out retired writer reflecting on what happened to everyone and then finally “ . . . as for me . . .” Ugh!
Has a lot of potential but needs a lot of polish and re-writes. I’ll give it a B-. An A for the first hour, but C- or D for the rest.
Written: 13 May 2001