Simply Perfect

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

An English Professor tries to deal with his wife leaving him, the arrival of his editor who has been waiting for his book for seven years, and the various problems that his friends and associates involve him in. Wonder Boys has a terrific and talented cast of big names like Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Rip Torn and Robert Downey Jr but the film's weird characters, bland acting and terrible script makes up for an awful movie. There's an entire plot with a dead dog, Douglas writing a book and also Douglas falling down in the entire film plus it's 1hr and 47mins only and it feels like 2hrs and 30mins that's how bad it was personally please go and see L.A Confidential it's a better directed movie and also a better acted movie too. (0/10)

Wonder Boys or the absolute fail, you are still wondering what Curtis Hanson and his writer Steve Kloves wanted to tell us through this abysmally weak story from which there is absolutely nothing to draw nor to save. The script, or rather the catch-all, is composed of disjointed scenes, with no binder, that don't form a logical and coherent whole. The genres on which the movie relies on just don't work: the comical aspect is totally missing, and the drama side turns out to be uninteresting with a plot a lot too limited, with no clear direction nor enough convincing stakes. As for the characters, they are personified with no verve by a little inspired cast, they are not endearing and don't arouse any empathy which is inevitably crippling for a comedy-drama. To think this movie was nominated for the Oscars...

Coming-of- age is not limited to the transition from adolescence to adulthood. A coming-of-age emotionally can occur at any time in one's life. Winner of the AFI award for Movie of the Year in 2001, Wonder Boys features a commanding performance by Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp, a once great novelist who is now a burned out, pot-smoking English Professor at a college in Pittsburgh. Tripp has been working on a massive novel that has grown to 2611 pages for the last seven years, but who has lost the inspiration to complete it.Set on the college campus, Professor Tripp is not having a good day. His wife has just left him, his lover (Frances McDormand), wife of the University Chancellor (Richard Thomas), tells him that she's pregnant, his flamboyant gay editor Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey, Jr.) is coming from New York for the college's annual writer's festival, and one of his most promising students, James Leer (Tobey McGuire), a brilliant but suicidal young writer, has attached himself to Tripp.Out of these many and varied crises comes a comedy of wit and intelligence that includes such bizarre circumstances as the theft of Marilyn Monroe's fur coat, the unfortunate demise of the Chancellor's dog, a stolen Cadillac, a novel blowing in the wind, and much more. These strange occurrences bring with them the opportunity for Tripp to reassess his life and discover what new directions are open to him. Wonder Boys is brilliantly written, funny, and touching and one of my favorite films of the last decade. It is one of the few films I know that are comfortable with smoking pot and having sex, both gay and straight, not as a manipulative plot device or a display of weakness, but as a part of normal, every day life.

Alternating between an oddball comedy, a surreal thriller and a meditation on the nature of writing, Wonder Boys is an original and thought-provoking film that doesn't quite reach its goal. It's unclassifiable and virtually indescribable, yet all the stylistic tools it uses seem to come directly from any one of the genres it's comprised of; it doesn't do enough to create its own unique style, and therefore fails to focus and become a unique non-genre piece. In other words, it feels too often like a mainstream Hollywood affair, when it's anything but.Wonder Boys is adapted from a very early work by Michael Chabon, to my taste one of the finest American novelists of the last twenty years, and his lack of experience is felt in the script as it is in the novel. It's filled with lots of great ideas, but it lacks in that ever-important focus - and so remains unsatisfying. It's an interesting movie that's worth checking out, especially for those interested in writing and authors, but it's not likely to become an all-time favorite.