The 2000's Movie Project: 'Wonder Boys'

Wonder Boys is the kind of movie that pops up in my mind every now and again, and just hangs out for a while. Something about this oddball little world created by Curtis Hanson just sticks to my ribs. Perhaps it is the lament of the blocked writer that gets me, or it could be that wonderfully cockeyed happy ending. It could be any number of wonderful little details all packed into a charming, ramshackle package held together by the lovely twang of a Bob Dylan inspired soundtrack.

Wonder Boys stars Michael Douglas as Professor Grady Tripp, the human example of a shambles. Grady smokes too much weed, and drinks a little too much bourbon, all while writing his latest novel, one that Stephen King might admonish him to edit a few pages from. Grady’s been writing the same book for over six years, and it’s not getting any shorter or closer to completion just because his best friend and editor, Crabtree (Robert Downey Jr) has come to town.

The plot of Wonder Boys kicks in with the completed introduction of James Leer (Tobey Maguire). Leer is one of Grady’s students, an ultra-talented malcontent weirdo. James has a habit of writing depressive, yet well written short stories in Grady’s class that he dashes off in under an hour, as he explains to his teacher in a moment of awkward honesty. Leer has also completed a novel that is, we are told, far more impressive than his in class output.

James Leer’s talents include being able to name actors and actresses who have taken their lives, the year of their death, and their means of reaching their demise. It’s a melancholy trick, perfectly appropriate for James’s melancholic character. Maguire makes these traits feel organic, he wears James like a second skin, there appears no distance between actor and character for Maguire in Wonder Boys, and I adore him so.

The same could be said of Robert Downey Jr whose charms and effervescent puckishness combine with Hanson’s vision of Crabtree as a carousing romantic whose attentions are seemingly carried by a breeze only he can sense. Watch Downey’s eyes in Wonder Boys, the ways his eyes dance; it’s beautiful to watch. Even when forced toward vulnerability, there is play in his eyes and a song in his heart, you just know that he will be okay.

The same can’t be said for Douglas’ Grady. He has options, he has goals but he has little drive. He knows he has a depth of feeling for Frances McDormand’s Sara, but is he too much of a failure for her, and the baby he’s managed to plant within her? That’s a plague on his soul nearly as vast as his book, but it’s not something that either Michael Douglas or Curtis Hanson play on in a literal sense. Like so much of this lovely movie, you can perceive pretty easily what’s holding Grady back.

Michael Douglas’ haggard, harried, professor appears to wear his entire life on his sleeve. His manner of dress includes far too many layers of things he keeps forgetting to remove and replace. Days have slipped into weeks and months and years, and while things happen, little changes. Sara is a light in the darkness, but just how distant is she, and can we breach that distance? Again, that’s my perception, the movie is much more laid back, preferring that we do the heavy perceptive lifting.

One of the subtle aspects of a truly great movie, in my mind, is when a writer and director takes care to give life and color to both the main, and even minor supporting characters. Wonder Boys is populated with a bevy of glorious side characters whose lives appear to have a movie of their own taking place just off to the side. Katie Holmes’ Hannah is perhaps the best example. We see her just having these small adventures in her own scenes, how she finds herself emotionally drawn to Grady, and is having a slow, likely comic, realization of her mistake.

We never see that comic realization but it is not hard to imagine it just from Holmes’s little takes and minor scenes. That’s the care that actress and director have taken with that character. Richard Thomas as well is perhaps part of an even sillier movie somewhere else in this universe. His pompous professor requires a good puncturing down to size, but that’s not the movie Wonder Boys is. That other movie is assuredly one where Thomas gets what is coming to him while Wonder Boys is simply a place he brings some color to.

Rip Torn, Alan Tudyk, Richard Knox, and Jane Adams—playing a waitress named Oola and wearing Marylin Monroe’s wedding jacket—are short stories all in just a handful of scenes, or even a few words. Curtis Hanson and screenwriter Steven Kloves appear to adore these characters, and the joy they bring to giving them life radiates off the screen. Each one has an irresistible quality, and yet they never get in the way, never disrupting this terrific story.

Wonder Boys tickles me every time I watch it. It’s a little lazy and shaggy, but wonderfully so. Wonder Boys exists in the midst of characters you want to be around and get to know, if not perhaps spend too much time rooting for. Grady doesn’t need you to root for him. Nor does Crabtree or James Leer. But perhaps if you could buy them a beer or bourbon, they might tell you a really great story.