AMERICANS didn't know what to make of Wonder Boys, an absurdly clever tale of great and failed expectations, so it bombed. Britain, please pay more attention now that this Hollywood curve-ball movie is being re-launched.

The director is Curtis Hanson, the craftsman behind the Oscar-adorned LA Confidential; the script is a work of adult sophistication by Steve Kloves in the manner of American Beauty; the cast boasts a self-deprecating, re-born Michael Douglas, the marvellous Frances McDormand, the Hollywood bad boy Robert Downey Jr and the prince of oddball young Americans, Tobey Maguire. The vintage soundtrack introduces the first new Bob Dylan song of the 21st century (Things Have Changed); film memorabilia devotees will love the appearance of a Marilyn Monroe jacket, leading to comments about her slim shoulders.

Playing the dishevelled Grady Tripp, the newly paunchy, bespectacled Douglas gives the best turn as a disorganised, weary university tutor since Michael Caine in Educating Rita in 1983. Tripp is a befuddled if endearing literary professor, a former wonder boy forever on the dope, no doubt adding to his inability to make decisions. Seven years in the writing, his follow-up novel to his award-winning debut is no nearer completion, much to the frustration of his fruity agent (Downey Jr, sublimely camp).

His wife has just left him; his disgruntled mistress, the English department dean's wife (McDormand), is pregnant; his student tenant (Katie Holmes) has the hots for him. Meanwhile, his most talented student, new wonder boy James Leer (Maguire), is a weirdo loner, dangerously fixated by Hollywood suicides.

Just as director Hanson smartly negotiated the labyrinthine plot of LA Confidential, so he handles the chaos and equally fascinating characters of Wonder Boys with elan, wit and tenderness. Never mind the cheesy aroma emanating from the ending, Wonder Boys is a darkly comic gem.