Director Curtis Hanson changes things up once again in “Wonder Boys.” Hanson brought us “L.A. Confidential” in 1997, a dark look at corruption in Los Angeles and established a reputation in noir filmmaking that he could have ridden out for years.

As with most directors, all it takes is one film to show you are capable of a wide range of efforts.

Michael Douglas himself has been looking to change things up as he matures. His naked butt in the moonlight walk through “Basic Instinct” pushed the envelope on his hot and sexy days as a hard-boiled leading man. His butt made him the butt of more than a few jokes. It was gratuitous.

In “Wonder Boys,” Douglas and Hanson have both decided to take the road more traveled for some reason, and the end result is a boring, little film that tries to be cute and quirky giving us characters who are supposed to be high on personality, but ultimately no one cares.

The film looks good, but as Gertrude Stein said, “There is no there, there.”

“Wonder Boys” is the story of an aging literature professor at a small college. Douglas plays Grady Tripp, a dowdy, graying, one-time celebrity who has run straight into a mid-life crisis.

Robert Downey Jr. plays Terry Crabtree, Tripp’s editor. He pushes Tripp to release his latest effort, but of course the writer’s block makes that impossible and Tripp has to keep putting him off. Downey has done better work, but playing Douglas’ foil is probably better than waiting for his next leading role.

Tripp’s social life is also in upheaval as he has managed to impregnate the married chancellor of his college (Francis McDormand).

Tripp also has the luck or misfortune to have a student with a crush on him, Hannah (Katie Holmes).

Tobey Maguire plays James Leer, a promising young writer who spends much of his screen time brooding and acting deep. Tripp takes the lad under his tutelage and, of course, ends up learning as much as he imparts.

There is nothing really new here, and while films can often take what is familiar and put a new spin on it, “Wonder Boys” doesn’t really do that. It isn’t done particularly badly, it just isn’t done particularly well, either.

It manages to mix up the comedy and the sentimentality well enough, but neither one takes charge. Ultimately, a comedy-drama should fall soundly on one side or the other so the audience knows that the comedy was there to aid the drama or the dramatic moments were there to add sweet poignancy to the laughs.

But when both are mixed in and the blend is incomplete, you get something that is lumpy and limps along like Grady Tripp after his big “dog bite” scene.

Tobey Maguire has established himself as a talented young up-and-comer in “Cider House Rules” and “The Ice Storm.”

He has a dorky sense of self-assurance about him like Edward Norton. Maguire could just as easily play the nerd who gets beat on mercilessly or the kid who takes control of his life and makes a go of it.

But in “Wonder Boys,” Maguire’s attempts to come off as dark, talented and deep are flatter than a tone deaf swing choir. It’s as if the director said, “Look Tobey, you’re good so just play this guy like he’s watching everybody and observing them and has them all figured out, okay?” And Maguire interpreted these instructions as meaning “stand there with a thousand yard stare and try not to blink.”

Michael Douglas used to get away with playing some cool characters, cops living on the edge, harried rich business men trapped in a world of fantasy violence and defense contractors who snap under the pressure.

Whether you love him or hate him, Douglas could usually pull a performance out of nowhere that had people talking for weeks. After “Falling Down,” few could doubt his on-screen ability to play characters with unusual depth.

But this time around, Douglas seems to be going through the motions and the fault is undoubtedly with the character. Who cares about some middle-aged college professor’s mid-life crisis? It’s so ’80s. This movie has been done better on TV shows and the subject matter works better when it is happening to a character we have some connection to.

No one can seriously be expected to care about the sudden break in character of a man they were just introduced to. If we had some previous knowledge of Grady Tripp, if we had been witness to “The Adventures of Grady Tripp in the Wonderful World of Literature” five years ago, then maybe his sudden inability to write would matter.

Frankly Michael, we don’t give a damn.

It was more fun looking for the tell-tale signs of Downey’s drug use in his performance. This reviewers verdict is he is getting a little too chunky to still be doing the smack. Good for him.

Now that he has that monkey off his back, maybe he can try to work on putting some energy into his roles without the added incentive of sticking a spike in his veins at the end of the day.

Director Hanson had a good thing going with “L.A. Confidential” and he should not be too eager to get away from the dark stuff. If you are going to be stuck doing movies in a similar vein, you could do a lot worse than the complex murder mystery that once was.

See this one with your grandma if she was a big fan of “The Streets of San Francisco,” but if your looking for a good laugh with sentimentality, you better hit the video store this week.

2 Star

Rating based on a 5 Star scale.

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Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.