Ya know what? Being spanked by Trigger... well.. it turns me on somehow. Whoooooooooaaaaaaa! Just kidding. Ahem... Yeah... Just kidding. Evil Harry wrote that. Folks, here's the first word on Curtis Hanson's follow-up to LA CONFIDENTIAL. Curtis had some problems finding his 'next' project... and for while was even contemplating directing SPACE COWBOYS. However, he decided to do... this... WONDER BOYS, this is a review of an extremely rough cut. So, know that this is not quite the film you'll be seeing when you settle into your seat later next year. But... I'll go ahead and turn it on over to Roy Roger's best friend... Trigger...BEWARE OF SPOILERS BELOW...

Ok Harry... it's Trigger once again. I just got home a few hours ago from watching Wonder Boys rough-cut sneak preview. I wasn't sure if I was gonna submit a scoop for you or not because of your stellar review of End of Days. To be honest, it put me off. I thought EOD was the worst movie ever made. Maybe there was something interesting there, but who could tell the way it was edited? 7 different camera angles of every single scene spliced together so that no single shot stayed on screen for more than a second or two. It was more nauseating than Blair Witch's shaky cam. Maybe I'm being hard on Arnie, but that movie was not an Arnold film - it was just bad. I could go on... But I digress. That's your spanking, now go to your room and think about what you've done.

Alright, so I've decided to forgive you this one time and give you the poop. Once again, I don't know all the names of parties involved and don't feel like looking them up (knowing full-well that your readers will be pissed)... Here goes anyway... Today was a strange day, woke up early and had a few appointments. My father called me during the first one to ream me out in front of my client. That was unsettling. Then the second appointment just kept going on and on and on... we were supposed to be at the theatre an hour early and time was running out. Long story short, we (me and my roommate) made it - just barely... we were among the last few allowed in and the line behind us was long. We had to sit in the front row and strain our necks to see the movie... I still have a headache. Everybody in the film looked short and fat. Michael Douglas and the director and some other actors were supposed to be there (we couldn't see them because we were up front, but we did see some chairs roped off when we walked in), and we were required to dress nice.

Some suit came up to the front to announce in a hoarse stern voice that the film is a "work-in-progress" and that some of the color won't match and the music isn't final and there will be scratches and pops in some parts. It didn't turn out as bad as he made it out to be. Anyway, after the announcement, the movie began...

The movie was "Wonder Boys" directed by the same director as L.A. Confidential (a movie that didn't really do anything for me). It starred Michael Douglas, Katie Holmes, Toby Macguire (I think that's how you spell it - he's the kid from Pleasantville), Robert Downey Jr. (amazing how he can make movies while in the slammer), and Rip Torn (gotta love that guy's name). It starts out with Michael Douglas doing narration (which continues throughout the movie) creating the backdrop for this movie about people. Toby (Tobie? who knows?) and Katie are students of Douglas who is a broken down writer teaching college level writing classes. Douglas looks like shit covered in dirt. Maybe it was the angle I had to view the film in, but he looked really fat and old and he didn't shave. Katie Holmes was looking cute. Her acting was decent and appropriate, but she was playing a student infatuated with her teacher (who she also lived with - they never really explained that either) who was old and fat. Her role was neither believable nor did it have a point. Toby was good at playing a savant type who was despised by his classmates and who couldn't tell the truth to save his life.

Anyhoo... Douglas hasn't written a book in 7 years - since the success of his last book. Actually - he's been writing the whole time, but has yet to finish. He's on page 2612 to give you an idea and it's all pounded out on a typewriter (foreshadowing - duh - one copy? get it?) and he writes in this pink women's bathrobe. It's a sad sight to see an aging fat Douglas standing there in an ugly pink woman's bathrobe. He also is a chronic dope smoker and he suffers from "spells" where he passes out - the point of which I don't know. The opening of the movie also explains that his wife just left him that morning and later we find out that he got the headmaster's wife pregnant through an affair they've been having. Whew... what a shitty life, right? Well, that's what the audience is supposed to feel - but it didn't seem to me any worse than anybody else's shitty life. He had a job, a best selling book under his belt, 2 women who loved him and a nice house to live in.

Robert Downey likes to sleep with men in this movie introduced to us in the form of him being accompanied by a transvestite as he was being picked up from the airport. Downey is Douglas's publisher and friend. He was more of a catalyst than a character. His homosexuality was pointless to the story, but he's played gay before so this wasn't a stretch or anything. Instead of a gay character though, he was playing more like one of his characters from an Anthony Michael Hall movie.

Things take a turn for the worse when Toby shoots Douglas's girlfriend's husband's blind dog (the scene is pretty funny so I won't ruin it with all the details) and steals some Marilyn Monroe memorabilia from a safe in their house. Toby is this weird kid who writes really well and makes all these outrageous claims about his various states of poor living conditions when the reality is that he lives with his wealthy parents in an upscale neighborhood. Downey ends up in bed with Toby (yeah I know I'm misspelling it) which was unnecessary, but oh well... lots of things in this movie seemed pointless. Katie Holmes's whole part in the movie was pointless - this film was based on a book and it was one of those films about a writer where you find out at the end that this movie is the result, cause and contents of the book you are now reading/watching... and I think the writer took some artistic license and added some hot little college student being in love with him to make him look good or to make him feel better about himself. But she did look cute with her vacant stares and her perky little tits. In a predictable (yet comical) scene near the end, Downey accidentally causes Douglas's book (all 2612 pages) fly out of the car and blow away... 7 years of work in the river. It gives Douglas his motivation to take charge of his life and generate a happy ending by getting married to his friend's wife, have a baby with her, finish his book (which of course the contents of are the movie we have just watched), quit smoking dope and shave.

I could tell you everything that was in the movie, but there's nothing to spoil here... it's just a movie about people. Much like American Beauty, it was middle aged crisis type stuff - but it had less edge. There was ample humor and a respectable amount of drama. It was a well balanced movie. Nothing all too memorable, but it wasn't bad. So many movies today are bad. This one was not bad. Was it good? Well - it was good for the type of movie it was. Nothing groundbreaking here. It wasn't cutesy. This is one of the first in a new trend (trends cycle - only thing new about it is that it hasn't been around since the Terms of Endearment and Stealing Home era) of human nature movies about people in realistic situations acting like people act. These movies touch some people in a special place, but most of them strike me as bland slice-of-life stuff. The acting was good enough and the characters were likeable enough (almost) and the story had a decent flow to it. The cinematography wasn't distracting at all. Overall, it wasn't a bad movie. It was a tame American Beauty (in spirit) with a happy ending. Not really uplifting or anything, but just pleasant and predictable.

Trigger