Wonder Boys - 8th October 2013

Tuesday Night is Film Night continues into October with a comedy drama from 2000;

Wonder Boys

First things first, let us take a small pirouette around the cast of this film and hey, why not do it with bullet points? Why not indeed.

• Michael Douglas plays English professor and writer Grady Tripp
• Tobey Maguire plays James Leer, a troubled but brilliant student of Prof. Tripp.
• Robert Downey Jr weighs in as the demanding and voracious editor and literary agent Terry Crabtree.
• Frances McDormand plays Sara Gaskell, love interest to Prof. Tripp and Dean at their university.
• And finally in this mini roundup of the main characters, Richard Thomas plays Walter Gaskell, husband to Sarah and boss to Prof. Tripp. (Who some of you may remember as John Boy Walton, from The Waltons).

It would normally be at this juncture that the blog would turn to the plot of the film and start chronicling the storyline, but there hangs a bit of an issue, a problemette if you will. After 30 minutes of this 107 minute slog, there was no real plot, no real story and no real cohesion between one piece of dialogue and the next. Some information was presented in a narrative from the central character; Prof. Grady Tripp, as if he were proffering his story from his own book (which was probably true). However, it did not get much better in the remaining 77 minutes.

In a effort to outline a bit of the story let us say that the thinly veiled plot encompasses the following threads; Grady Tripp's wife leaves him. Tripp is struggling with a new book. His editor Crabtree fly's in to take a look, with a view to publication. Tripp is in a relationship with his boss's wife. An introverted student of Prof. Tripp is a prolific and gifted writer. A jacket worn by Marilyn Monroe makes an appearance and is subsequently stolen.

And someone shoots a dog.

And this all happens over a disastrous weekend.

That really is about it. Some positive notes; the acting was marginally better than OK. There were some funny moments. I know this for a fact as I counted them on the fingers of one hand.

What else to say about the film? It's based on the 1995 novel, of the same name, by Michael Chabon. Having not read the book, I cannot comment as to whether it is better than the film, but it would be hard pressed to be any worse.

Reading some of the reviews on Amazon, it seems our view is in the minority and some people enjoyed this film, one reviewer states;

".... if you are looking for an intelligent, quirky comedy then you will be delighted and dazzled by this little gem."

I would counter this with; in our opinion it was awful. It seemed to be a disjointed, ramshackle affair, where a thin, weak and insipid plot was bolstered only by some talented actors doing their jobs properly.

I would quite enjoy an intelligent, quirky comedy / drama, but this was not one of them.

As for the all important scores;

TNiFN Rating 40%