スランプの作家、クビ寸前の編集者、作家志望の学生などの面々が揃った、可笑しくてちょっと切ない大人の物語。“ワンダー・ボーイ”とは人生の早いうちに大きな成功を手にした人のことなのだが……。
AIが作品の魅力を深く読み解いています
製作費: $35,000,000 (53億円)
興行収入: $33,426,588 (50億円)
推定収支: $-1,573,412 (-2億円)
※製作費・興行収入はTMDBのデータを参照しています。収支は(興行収入 - 製作費)で算出したFindKey独自の推定値であり、広告宣伝費や諸経費は含まれません (1ドル=150円換算)。
監督: Curtis Hanson
脚本: Michael Chabon / Steve Kloves
制作: Curtis Hanson / スコット・ルーディン / Ned Dowd
撮影監督: ダンテ・スピノッティ
制作会社: Paramount Pictures / Mutual Film Company / Scott Rudin Productions / Curtis Hanson Productions / BBC / Marubeni / TOHO-TOWA / Tele München / MFF Feature Film Productions
I have to believe I saw this movie a year or two after it came out, but I had no feelings of deja vu as I watched it, so perhaps not. I usually have very little patience for movies about writers because I am one, and I get tired of them bringing up writers’ block, which I don’t believe exists, or else they have the character become wildly successful in record time. There are a lot of struggling actresses and musicians and waitresses in movies, but writers often get fast-track succes. Anyway, I wander off topic. I enjoyed the movie with its range of quirky characters, and minor plot twists. There are only a couple of two-dimensional characters; the rest are given depth, even a few who don’t have a lot of screen time. It shows what can be achieved with a good ensemble cast and a decent script.
"Prof. Tripp" (Michael Douglas) hasn't his troubles to seek. He hasn't been able to follow up on his first novel for almost seven years - much to the chagrin of his agent "Terry" (Robert Downey Jr); his third wife has left him and he is about to father a child with his (married) boss (Frances McDormand) at the university where he works. His writer's block isn't really much helped by the omnipresence of his star pupil "James" (Tobey Maguire) nor by his increasingly debilitating pot habit. It's the man's mid life crisis from hell, but can he navigate a way out of this and keep some semblance of his self respective and, maybe even his career! Meantime, his protégé is having a few issues of his own - not least because he accidentally shot the principal's dog and he is the object of the amorous attentions of the ambisextrous "Terry" too! There's quite a decent dynamic between Douglas and Maguire as both men have to come to terms with their own problems and with their growing reliance on and frustration of each other and there is plenty of witty dialogue that is more complexly structured and subtly potent at times. The narrative is quite tightly packed into just one weekend, and that helps keeps the momentum going as the characters develop in quite a plausible - and not always likeable - fashion. Luckily, the one-dimensional Katie Holmes appears only sparingly as the plot thickens to a nicely bubbling stew at the end. It's a decent reminder that Douglas could act, given a strong story and script, and he shows us that well here with this superior ensemble drama.
