From the Feb 24 – Mar 1, 2000 issue

Film

Fiendish Regret

Curtis Hanson's Wonder Boys Plays it Cool

by Steve Wiecking

SOMEWHERE NEAR the beginning of Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon's thoughtful comic novel about the fiendishness of regret, college professor Grady Tripp walks out of his suffocating creative writing classroom and leaves morose star pupil James Leer sitting pensively in the dark. "I knew that I shouldn't have, but I did it all the same," Grady narrates. "And there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together."

The film that Curtis Hanson has made of Chabon's book has some trouble constructing that melancholy monument, as would most commercial movies, yet nevertheless can proudly claim some surprisingly fine handiwork. Wonder Boys, the movie, appreciates the little things about Wonder Boys, the book--its rueful mottos and small characters--even if it can't completely capture the darkness on the horizon.

Any film that can make an audience stomach Michael Douglas, it should first be noted, is a minor accomplishment. Hanson's film does more than that--this is Douglas' finest performance in years. Vulnerability is far from his forte (and so is likability, for that matter), but somehow Douglas relaxes into a casual, harried weakness as Grady Tripp, though he's at least a dozen years too old for the part. When Tripp, a downward-spiraling sometime-novelist, finds himself inextricably tied to the fate of the promising but pathological Leer (ever-present Tobey Maguire), it's actually Douglas' reserve that allows you to believe that so much of what happens could unfold so naturally.

What happens involves a lot of quirky incidents that, in less creative hands, could have poked you in the ribs one time too many. Hanson, fresh from the success of L.A. Confidential, wisely stays cool and lets his camera pick up the quirks as they come. Tripp is busy avoiding his mischievous editor and confidante, Terry Crabtree (the redoubtable Robert Downey Jr.), who is awaiting a final draft of an unfinished second novel--Wonder Boys--that has been far too many years in the making. After romantically tangling with an affable drag queen (Michael Cavadias), Crabtree sets his lascivious professional and romantic sights on Leer. Meanwhile, Tripp reels from the news that not only has his wife left him, but his long-time mistress (Frances McDormand)--who is also his boss' wife--is now pregnant by him. Pot smoking, car-thievery, and dead dog-smuggling follow. Should we marvel that such oddball mishaps are handled in such an ingenuously low-key manner by a director who not long ago churned out grade-B hackwork like The River Wild and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle?

Things are certainly helped by the fact that Steve Kloves is responsible for the screenplay adaptation. The man behind the laid-back rhythms of Flesh and Bone and The Fabulous Baker Boys, Kloves has always had an ear for the down-and-out, and Hanson rides on the drowsy momentum Kloves successfully transferred from Chabon's novel. There's an appealing looseness to the dialogue, yet when Douglas says he has to save Maguire because "sometimes people just need to be rescued," it has a gentle gravity.

That gravity is elsewhere lost, however. Though the story's affecting weariness, and Tripp's lonesome decline, is front and center, it isn't ingrained in the movie's cloth. Most of the same events that in the book are tinged with doubt (including the denouement) are presented here with sincerity and depth, but only insofar as they lead to redemption. Hanson puts an uplifting spin on a story that would resonate just as well without.

Fortunately, the rest of the movie is up to the task. In addition to the invaluable Downey Jr., Maguire, in his best role yet, lives up to his perfect casting. The finest work, however, comes from McDormand, who is able to convey several conflicting emotions in one disappointed glance; the small part offers her smartest post-Fargo performance yet. The movie also glows from the blues of Dante Spinotti's cinematography, some great, unassuming production design by Jeannine Oppewall (Leer's bedroom is a treat), and a terrific soundtrack.

Even if its soul wavers, Wonder Boys has certainly found the remarkable heart of Chabon's book.