An adaptation of the novel by Michael Chabon -- and an odd choice of project for Curtis Hanson, or at least it seems so if you resist the conclusion, even after L.A. Confidential, that Hanson has gone bookish and gone parvenu. A "smart," tart, dark, literate, adult comedy, set in the groves of Academe, it covers the three days of the campus "Wordfest" conference, when troubles are piling up on the professorial hero: his wife has just walked out on him; his student boarder, female, is batting her eyelashes at him; another student, male, is contemplating suicide; his literary agent is impatient to have a look at the long-awaited followup to his first novel, The Arsonist's Daughter; his lover, the college chancellor and wife of the head of the English Department, is pregnant by him; and the department head's dog lies dead in his car trunk. (The canine casualty has become a dark-comedy cliché.) There are several dependable people in the cast -- Frances McDormand, Tobey Maguire, Jane Adams, Rip Torn -- but Michael Douglas still seems overlarge and overluminous after attempting to squeeze himself into the lead role. A pair of spectacles perched on the tip of his nose is a thin disguise. And the movie in general suffers from that American literary compulsion (to say nothing of American cinematic compulsion) to deliver entertainment nonstop: punchlines, slapstick, a dead dog, whatever it takes. The useful point of comparison would be the British Accident by the American expatriate, Joseph Losey. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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