Character development is not at a premium in Hollywood anymore. Why explore the dark nights of the soul when you can just have Adam Sandler use a dumb voice? So when a movie has real people… has ideas… has soul… it is a reason to celebrate. Wonder Boys, in its own offbeat way is just as subversive as There’s Something About Mary, but instead of assuming that the audience is stupid, this film gives us the benefit of the doubt that we are going to get it.

Wonderfully adapted from a terrific novel by Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys gives Michael Douglas his meatiest role in years as a college professor who is still trying to write a follow-up to a respected novel he wrote years before. Instead of losing his talent, as most clichéd films would suggest, he has lost his discipline… his life has become a dizzying whir of dull classes, meaningless sex, recreational drug use, university politics and thousands and thousands of pages of a rambling, unfocused attempt at returning to literary glory.

His life spins further out of control through a friendship with a new student (Tobey Maguire) who is as talented as he is mentally disturbed. But through a wonderfully twisted storyline that somehow encompasses a dead dog, a sweater that may have belonged to Marilyn Monroe, a transvestite and a cute coed, the professor regains his lust for life and artistic vision. Wonder Boys is a small gem of a movie. Don’t miss it. (2/00)

Jay S. Jacobs