Starring: Philip Bosco, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand, Michael Douglas, Richard Thomas Directed By: Curtis Hanson Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: DVD Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC Label: Paramount Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Region Code: 1 Release Date: March 13, 2001 Running Time: 112 minutes Theatrical Release Date: 2000
Product Description: A college professor who's been divorced three times and hasn't been able to overcome writer's block, gets his boss's wife, the college chancellor, pregnant. Genre: Feature Film-Drama Rating: R Release Date: 8-AUG-2006 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com: Wonder Boys is one of those movies in which more twists and turns disrupt the life of the hero in one weekend than would bother most of us our whole lives. Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is an aging one-novel wunderkind at a small Pittsburgh college who's laboring on his seven-years-in-the-making, 2000-plus page second opus with no end in sight. The morning of the college's literary lollapalooza, WordFest, Grady's wife leaves him; that evening, his mistress (Frances McDormand) announces she's pregnant (she's also the chancellor of the school, as well as the wife of Grady's boss). Grady's voracious editor (Robert Downey Jr.) is also in town, transvestite date in tow, determined to read the highly anticipated new book; there's also the nubile student (Katie Holmes), who seems more than willing to ease Grady's pain. And then there's James Leer (Tobey Maguire), the mordant and brilliant writing student who's the catalyst for Grady's lost weekend, which involves a soon-to-be-dead blind dog, a stolen car, and the jacket that Marilyn Monroe wore when she wed Joe DiMaggio.
Had enough flights of fancy? It's only the beginning, and in the hands of director Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential) and screenwriter Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys), Wonder Boys will have you begging for more. Adroitly adapting Michael Chabon's novel and distilling it to its droll, melancholy essence, Kloves and Hanson have fashioned a briskly unsentimental and darkly funny tale; these characters may be down on their luck, but they sure don't feel sorry for themselves. Douglas, by turns dryly sarcastic and sincerely heartfelt, single-handedly makes up for years of alpha-male posturing as the passive pothead Tripp, and whoever thought of pairing him with the resilient McDormand is brilliant--they convey the complexities and history of their relationship in a single glance or movement. And under Hanson's guidance, the rest of the cast is truly exceptional, with Maguire in a breakthrough performance and Downey at his manic best. The ending of Wonder Boys may feel a little too pat, but after everything these characters have been through, a happy ending seems a just reward. --Mark Englehart
Excellent movie....... I loved this movie! It was hilarious with an amazing cast!
The movie has been out for awhile, but I never got around to watching it. I found out the movie was based off the book, "Wonder Boys" by Michael Chabon, so I had to check it out.
The cast includes Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire, Katie Holmes and Frances McDormand! According to Amazon it also stars Philip Bosco ??, his role is about 20 seconds, if youve ever even heard of the guy!
The story was great, the laughs kept coming throughout it!
Highly recommended to anyone looking for a fun, everyday life kind of movie!
Wonderful "Wonder Boys" "Wonder Boys" isn't quite a masterwork like Curtis Hanson's previous film, "L.A. Confidential," but it's excellent in its own way.
The humor in the film is subtle, but there are several guffaws to be had. The film follows a college English professor played by Michael Douglas during the weekend of Wordfest, a literary celebration that brings out a best-selling author (Rip Torn) whose prolific success only makes Douglas, who wrote one best-seller seven years earlier, feel like a failure. His marriage is on the rocks, he's having an affair with a colleague's wife (Frances McDormand), battling with his publisher (Robert Downey, Jr), and trying to comprehend the eccentricity of one of his most gifted pupils (Toby McGuire).
This is the kind of movie that should appeal to anyone who majored in English in college and delighted in mocking the pompous pinheads so often found in advanced literature courses. They are abundantly portrayed here.
Brian W. Fairbanks
Wonder Boys belongs in everyone's DVD collection I missed this movie in the theater, but it was on television one day and I had to have my own copy. Wonder Boys has become one of my top ten movie favorites of all time. It's a surprising sleeper that is worth having for every collection.
"I... am a writer!" Man, I hated that guy the second he got to the podium and said that!
A friend of mine lent me his copy of "Wonder Boys" a few years back. This is the book, mind you. I loved the book, so I was interested in seeing the movie when it came out... but I never did. I actually had to borrow the DVD from the same guy who lent me the book in the first place!
I was worried that the movie would really deviate from the book and try to sensationalize the murders (the dog... the snake). However, though the snake was omitted, they did not. In fact, aside from the whole story with the auto and the trip up north to his in-laws' house, the movie is pretty accurate to the book. I like how the movie was paced as well. Despite all the zannyness of the book, the film and the actions of the actors came off to me as realistic.
Also, I'm glad they shot on location in Pittsburgh. I would hate to see a movie about Pittsburgh (where I'm living now) and it be filmed in Toronto or Indianapolis...
The beauty of the absurd This is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite movies. I can watch it repeatedly and still crack up like I'm seeing it for the first time. SO well done. Rarely is a movie ever this well-written, hysterical and moving. Chabon is a wonderful writer; the book is great, but the movie was better. And how often does THAT ever happen?
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