This is one of the most sophisticated and perfectly balanced comedies ever to be filmed in America. Curtis Hanson, the director, was able to keep it on the very knife edge of gnomic humour. Michael Douglas gave the best performance I have ever seen from him. Frances McDormand was perfectly cast, but then she is perfectly cast in everything she does, whatever it is that she does. Here she does not snarl or threaten, she smiles ironically and even looks affectionate and loving. And the other perfect performance in the film comes from Tobey Maguire, as the student James Leer. Somehow all of these inspired actors manage to time every line and expression in wonderful synch, as if they were three limbs on the same body. And no matter how outrageous they are being at any given moment, they do it in a subtle manner. And that borders on the impossible. Think how many bad comedies you have seen, where everything goes wrong, is timed wrong, is too funny or too unfunny, or just doesn't work. Then try and imagine the opposite of all that, and this film is it. And it is filmed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is equally unexpected. And there are other wonderful performances as well, Rip Torn in an extended cameo, Robert Downey Jr. As a whimsical though despairing literary agent, and Katie Homes as the flirtatious student with a fixation on her professor, Michael Douglas. But it is the magnificent performance of Michael Douglas that holds the whole thing together with super-glue. The satire is laid on thick, and is a joy to behold. The pompous world of university English professors and lecturers, the deranged heads of universities and their spouses, the over-serious self-reverence of the academics who are such big fish in their small pond that they have splashed it dry, - all these are parodied, but once again, with well-judged subtlety. How could one possibly summarise the story? The events are crazily eccentric, and it is all so sublimely droll. What is the film about? Don't worry, just jump in, and take a roller coaster ride.
Review of Wonder Boys
