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"Wonder Boys" - Movie Review


There is an unbearable loftiness in the movies about movie making, novels or the art of writing itself. We are told a sort of highbrow frill, a play that espouses parallels to other writers or movie makers who might have trodden on this frighteningly monastic path. It is obscurantist, it is polemical and defensive.

But not this one; ‘Wonder Boys’ is deceptively simple. A former writer is undergoing a period inimical to no writer; he can’t stop writing. It is not a writer’s block, Michael Douglas is under influence, and hence cannot make choices. Therefore the long winding detailed passages leading nowhere, Katie Holmes observes. She is a student of Douglas and a good one at that. She is enamoured by her teacher, his writings inspire her and she occasionally confronts him with mad passion. Robert Downey Jr., in his usual charm and grace flavours the indifferent voyage through a spinning and dizzying journey that usurps the viewer with its fleeting moments. Tobey Maguire, another student of Douglas, shies away from a savant, flummoxes the viewers and irritates the teacher.

The movie is similar to “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” insofar that both the movies appear as flexible as on the director’s camera. It is as if the movies have been ported for audience view without editing. The moments are brief, non dramatic and strictly insoluble. You are still gripped with pleasure as the curtain closes in on you, for you want to know more. Movie is barely pragmatic, director’s effort in each take is washed away futile without the hiss and purr to knock your senses and let you know that the moment has arrived for you to pay attention. You will end up sitting through the whole movie not even realising that it was not the moments that you had to wake up to but instead the experience of watching something that is barely filled with moments. It’s transitory to say the least.

The movie leaves a taste of something never before tasted, not far from what we have been exposed to, but a rarity nonetheless. Adding to all of this of course is the plot itself. The art of writing is not discussed elaborately as one would have expected, but the college environment and the whole atmosphere of frigidity is emotionally imperative.

The plot twists and frolic fun are there too; whether it’s a dog kill or Marilyn Monroe’s wedding jacket, whether it’s the professor’s brief episodes or Katie Holmes’ beauty. It is all there in the movie. In addition to all of this, you are bound to find something unique to fall in love with the movie. By the end of it all, you will appreciate, and like me, you would watch it twice, atleast!

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