As novelist/college professor Grady Tripp, Douglas is at the center of this yarn, whose overall mood suggests Scorsese's After Hours, with tenure. Douglas is the frustrated writer who can't make good on a promise to deliver his second book to an editor (Michael Downey, Jr.) who's badly in need of a hit. He's the role model -- and surrogate father figure, and even potential love interest -- for eager students on his Pittsburgh campus (notably Tobey Maguire and Katie Holmes), some of whom decided to be writers on the basis of his highly regarded first novel. He's in love with Chancellor Sara Gaskell (Frances McDormand), who is in turn married to the chairman of the English department, who is his boss. And, when the college hosts a literary event dubbed "Wordfest," he's the nonplussed pivot on which the trials of a long, hard weekend turn.

I'm not familiar with the source material, a much-acclaimed novel by Michael Chabon, but the film plays a little too literary for its own good. I think it's a satire that portrays academia as an extended, dysfunctional family. That it's often quite funny doesn't keep it from feeling forced. The storyline is witty and propulsive -- that is, each unlikely event leads directly to the next, and we follow Grady closely over the course of the weekend. Much of the dialogue is lovely, and I'm sure it comes straight from the novel, but that's part of the problem -- films don't exist in the same mental space as novels, and when a screenwriter doesn't come to grips with that, the results can be distracting.

One disconcertingly artificial scene has Tripp, who has retreated from a cocktail party into a wintry Dante Spinotti night, encountering awkward but talented student James Leer (Maguire). Leer is carrying a gun, which signals his eccenctricity, but it doesn't feel authentic. Their ensuing conversation just feels wrong, more like an audition tape than an actual performance. It's as if the usually reliable Maguire was having trouble finding his character, and he does settle down a little later in the film.

Meanwhile, not all of the subplots pan out as well as they're meant to. One involves a jacket once worn by Marilyn Monroe that's stolen from its rightful owner, and which probably made a better literary device than a cinematic one (its reappearance on-screen seems anticlimactic). And while director Curtis Hanson showed his chops with L.A. Confidential, he just doesn't seem to have the same conviction in this material.

That having been said, Wonder Boys is still a finely entertaining piece of work, with a fundamental feeling of truthfulness that helps make up for its lapses into obviousness. Downey is fine -- a little crazy and absolutely believable as a fading publishing industry hipster who seems happy to bed every talented newcomer in sight. And Holmes' low-key role as one of Tripp's most earnest fans (and a disconcertingly dead-on critic) is a fine showcase for the cherubic young actress, who has yet to graduate into leading-role territory but may eventually get there.

But the biggest pleasure, I suppose, is in watching Tripp navigate his way through one little crisis after the next, and especially in seeing the people around him -- even strangers -- take it all in stride and just make the best of events. He's trying to be a good man in spite of his flaws, and the people in his world recognize that. As Hollywood grows fonder of escalating every difference of opinion or misdeed into a shouting match or an exchange of bullets, Wonder Boys reminds us that, in the real world, we generally have little choice but to try to get along with each other, and with ourselves.