Deep in the backwaters of BBC iPlayer there lurks an American film with an all-star cast that time forgot. In its day I think it was all but forgotten, too – garnering some critical acclaim but bombing at the box office, presumably because it was too clever or just didn’t appeal enough to teenagers (I can’t see why).
Fortunately, 25 years on, Wonder Boys, the campus-novel film starring Michael Douglas as a creative writing professor with writer’s block and an unravelling marriage, truly stands the test of time. You could even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic.
Directed by the late Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile) and based on Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, Wonder Boys turns on the events of a university’s literary festival where things go from bad to worse for Douglas’s protagonist, Professor Grady Tripp. Set in wintry Pittsburgh amid the snow – you could almost mistake it for a Christmas film – the unconventional plot is dotted with delicious flashes of surrealism, while the thing comes charging at you with more than a dash of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.
Described variously as a dark comedy or a comedy-drama, it offers a masterclass in beleaguered male midlife crisis-dom – there’s a lot of satisfyingly resigned anguish and measured self-loathing, too – in what may be one of Douglas’s most overlooked performances (to my mind it’s certainly up there with, say, Wall Street). In terms of range, Douglas is also a very long way from the creative territory occupied by the likes of Romancing the Stone, Fatal Attraction or Falling Down, and he doesn’t put a foot wrong.
Alongside Douglas there is a young Tobey Maguire, still a couple of years away from his first Spider-Man outing in 2002, though already feted after his starring role in 1999’s The Cider House Rules opposite Michael Caine. Then there’s a doe-eyed Katie Holmes in one of her earliest film roles (still six years away from her marriage to Tom Cruise), and Robert Downey Jnr, who had recently been released from prison and turns in a flawless performance as Professor Tripp’s agent Crabtree. He, like his client, is desperately in need of a hit to save his failing career. There is also the wonderful if underused Rip Torn, best known as Zed in Men in Black to anyone under 45, and, last but by no means least, the impeccable and already at this point Oscar-winning Frances McDormand. She quietly steals the show as Tripp’s love interest who (but of course) turns out to be married and the chancellor of the university.
When I first saw it, I recall identifying more closely with the students; a quarter of a century later, I’m closer in age to the professor, which is one of the joys of art, I suppose
As well as the zinging cast there’s Bob Dylan, who created a song for the film – ‘Things Have Changed’ – for which he won an Oscar, helping to make for a wonderful soundtrack which also includes Neil Young’s ‘Old Man’. The other star turn, of course, is provided by the script itself, written by the individual responsible for adapting all those Harry Potter books for film, Steve Kloves. Kloves quite rightly received an Oscar and Bafta nomination for his efforts.
So why didn’t the film do better 25 years ago? Apparently its release was bungled – they tried a second time and it didn’t help. Looking back at the big films of 2000, the roster is filled with Gladiator, How the Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey, Cast Away and Mission: Impossible 2. It’s almost another world… except it isn’t. But it’s not difficult to see how a quirky campus film like Wonder Boys might not cut through. It probably wouldn’t cut through today, either.
Still, it remains a genuine shame because the film evinces a rare warmth and charm – as well as making fun out of campus and literary life and, to a lesser extent, the world of publishing. And it’s good to see Douglas, who loaded on the pounds for the role, doing something quite different. He was nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Bafta for the performance, too.
When I saw it 25 years ago, I would have been pretty much the age of Tobey Maguire and I recall identifying more closely with the students; a quarter of a century later, I’m closer in age to the professor, which is one of the joys of art, I suppose. One day you’re Tiny Tim, before you know it you’re Scrooge.
If you haven’t already had the pleasure, then do scroll into the depths of BBC iPlayer and have a look in these quiet days between Christmas and new year. There’s lots of snow, a fair amount of binge-drinking and mild drug-taking; dreams are shattered and then remade. It’s life-affirming stuff, washed down with a little bit of anarchy. If only they had only put a tree or two in it, a few baubles and a bit of tinsel, it would have made an excellent Christmas film. You never know, it may even have been a hit.
Comments