I'll Be Seeing Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Friday film night got off to a late start but as Sarah Vaughan sang in the background I quickly cut up the pie and poured the beer while we debated what to watch. The double bill this week included another black and white film of the forties I'll Be Seeing You but first, and arguably the "A" film, was Wonder Boys.

This is a film we have both seen before and indeed we have both also read the excellent book. Arthur leant it to me in fact but it was quite surprising that he needed to given that I was already quite a fan of the author: Michael Chabon.

Neither of us are particular fans of the work of Michael Douglas however but he displays a great talent for comedy in this film and the rest of the cast is excellent as well. Tobey Maguire of Spidey fame is a rather enigmatic student of Douglas' burnt out writer/professor Grady Tripp and turns out to be both an inveterate liar and a talented writer himself.

Frances McDormand (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

The rest of the cast is also excellent and includes the wonderful Frances McDormand and Robert Downey Junior. The plot unfolds over "Wordfest" at the university where Grady has tenure and involves Marilyn Monroe's wardrobe, an unfortunate dog, infidelity, drug and alcohol abuse and the fate of Grady's massive "difficult second novel". Along the way hilarity and chaos ensue but it is in the subtleties of performance and writing that this film, a little gem, excels. When I first saw it, it blew away my preconceptions of what a Michael Douglas film would be like and it is one of those rare things a film that does justice to a great novel.

Movie screenshot of Ginger Rogers from The Thirteenth Guest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I also enjoyed the second feature though I wouldn't call it a classic. The cast is interesting, including as it does the always watch-able Joseph Cotton and Ginger Rogers. Alongside them is the to me sometimes rather irritating presence of miss good ship lollipop herself Shirley Temple. To be fair she is probably only as irritating as the plot calls for, being the precocious cousin who accidentally blabs the big secret - that our Ginger is on leave from clink. It is made clear that she is in for manslaughter and that it came about as an unfortunate accident. Personally I would still be rather wary of anyone who had brought about the death of someone by propelling them through an open window.

Shirley Temple (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

The sad sack that falls in love with her during her 8 day furlough is of course Cotton who already has enough problems of his own. He's been bayoneted and generally battered in the South East Asian theatre of operations and is somewhat of a basket case. Encountering the prisoner with the least likely convict hairdo in the world he immediately begins to stalk her by lying about his destination and getting off the train at her stop. Twitchy and uncoordinated, he suffers from panic attacks and is trying to recover from severe psychiatric trauma or shell shock. They deserve each other...and despite the blabber-mouthed Ms Temple who do you think turns up at the gate to the prison to reassure our Ginge of his undying love as she turns herself in for part two of her sentence? You've got it.

Frankly it's pretty daft in many ways but it wears its heart on its sleeve and has a good cast so it's not hard to like. I thought it was a very nice second feature and thoroughly enjoyed it, although there were times when I wanted Ginge to turn serial and defenestrate La Temple.