Wonder Boys (2000)
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Reviews Counted: 124
Fresh: 101 | Rotten: 23
Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire do wonders in this clever dark comedy.
Average Rating: 7.2/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 24 | Rotten: 5
Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire do wonders in this clever dark comedy.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 39,115
My Rating
Movie Info
In this comedy, a middle-aged man juggles his problems with women, literature, and a career, while a younger man chases the artifact of his dreams. Pittsburgh college professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) is currently single following his divorce from his third wife; after publishing an acclaimed first novel, Grady has been working on a follow-up, but he's been sidelined by a severe case of writer's block. Grady has more than his writing career to think about; his affair with one of the
Cast
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Michael Douglas
Grady Tripp -
Tobey Maguire
James Leer -
Frances McDormand
Sara Gaskell -
Robert Downey Jr.
Terry Crabtree -
Katie Holmes
Hannah Green -
Richard Thomas
Walter Gaskell -
Rip Torn
Q -
Philip Bosco
Hank Winters -
Jane Adams (II)
Oola -
Richard Knox
Vernon Hardapple -
Michael Cavadias
Antonia Sloviak -
Alan Tudyk
Sam Traxler
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Wonder Boys Trailer & Photos
All Critics (129) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (104) | Rotten (24) | DVD (25)
Michael Douglas gives the best perfromance of his career (to be remembered at Oscar time) in this screwball comedy about a college professor who's pushed into maturity by forces beyond his control; a well-acted coming-of-age saga for adults.
Wonder Boys digresses so entertainingly, you forget how quickly Grady got into the mess he's in, and can't imagine where we might be headed.
Top CriticGet going, you laggards.
World-weary has never been funnier or more fascinating than in Kloves' hands.
It's an often-wondrous comedy, just as rich and surprising as L.A. Confidential but considerably less dark.
I don't think I've ever seen another American comedy that mixed rue and slapstick and sentiment in quite this way.
This grand mess of a movie has many pleasures.
Like a favorite novel, "Wonder Boys" gets more comfortably broken-in with each return, and Michael Douglas wears Grady Tripp's scruffiness as sharply as he does Gordon Gekko's natty clothes - addressing jealousy, panic and terror in creative complacency.
One of those films where the term 'character study' is used to excuse the fact that there's nothing of real interest in the story.
If Douglas and Hanson have aimed to make Grady as simultaneously weary and jazzed...as Bob Dylan's Oscar-winning theme song is, they have come enticingly close, with marvelous highs along the way (not just the narcotic kind), but they haven't fully got th
Writer Steven Kloves and director Curtis Hanson turn Michael Chabon's novel into a quirky goofball pleasure.
As Tripp, Michael Douglas, looking hugely disheveled, does his best work in years; playing a real character after so many pictures in which he's glided by on an air of silken yuppiness, he proves that he's still a true actor.
...smart, charming, and funny ... It's about finding the right inspiration and making the right choices. Hanson and Kloves, it's abundantly clear, made a lot of right choices.
Paramount's ... DVD offers a splendid transfer (2.35:1 anamorphic) with strong, crisp audio in Dolby Digital 5.0.... "The Songs of Wonder Boys" (like album liner notes by Hanson)...
Don't let the lame marketing for this film turn you off, this film is surprisingly enjoyable.
I've never quite seen a movie like Wonder Boys. It is sometimes self-deprecating, often nostalgic and optimistic, but always slightly mysterious.
Veterans and relative newcomers populate the talented cast, led by Douglas in one of his best-rendered performances to date.
Wonder Boys has a delightfully malicious beginning, an increasingly muddled second act and a conclusion of such moral uplift that it probably should not be shown to the characters themselves.
This performance shows Douglas aging gracefully and willingly, an accomplishment that only a couple of famous leading men have achieved in recent years.
There's a story there, but it's probably not very interesting.
Audience Reviews for Wonder Boys
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Grady Tripp: He said things that led me to believe this is his car.
- Terry Crabtree: What things?
- Grady Tripp: "That's my car, motherfucker."
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Foreign Titles
- Die WonderBoys (DE)
