BOYS TO MEN EARLY BLOOMERS GET LATE ACCLAIM.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The press materials for the new movie ``Wonder Boys'' describes the title phenomena as men who've had great success at an early age but then have trouble living up to their reputations.

But that isn't precisely what the film shows us. It's more a story about talented but confused youths and their similarly uncertain, late-blooming elders, a thoroughly more complex take on what nurturing creativity requires in an age of overhyped acclaim and celebrity and similarly extreme exile to the cultural margins should you fall out of style.

``Wonder Boys' '' three main men - stars Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire and director Curtis Hanson - offer an even broader perspective on the artist's condition in an ever-changing culture.

At 55, Douglas has achieved just about everything a Hollywood player could dream of: youthful success as a producer (his 1975 ``One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' is among only three pictures ever to win the top five Academy Awards), the acting Oscar that has even eluded his legendary father Kirk (for ``Wall Street''), international superstardom and, now, the hand of the most attractive actress to hit the screen in years, Catherine Zeta-Jones.

In the film he plays Grady Tripp, a Pittsburgh college professor who wrote a great novel in his early 40s but, seven years later, is lost in a haze of personal and creative confusion. Although he's played against his superslick smoothy image before in such films as ``Falling Down'' and ``The War of the Roses,'' Douglas reveled in the chance to gain some weight, wear ugly clothes and otherwise impersonate a loser this time out.

And wouldn't you know it? Early reviews are giving the unsinkable golden boy the best notices of his career.

``I think it has to do with how you understand your screen image,'' Douglas says about aging gracefully - or, at least, entertainingly - on camera. ``I think, having had some producing experience, I know that if a movie is good, it benefits everybody. I've watched too many actors be more concerned with their images rather than making the picture work.

``My father's from a different generation, but I think the image thing hurt him to an extent,'' Douglas adds, clenching his jaw in imitation of the aggressively intense Kirk. ``He had that thing going there, and it worked. Yet my favorite movie of his was 'Lonely Are the Brave,' which was a more vulnerable character.''

Easygoing vulnerability is working well, so far, for Maguire. The 24- year-old actor, who spent some of his childhood in the San Fernando Valley, has been overshadowed by his good friend, worldwide heartthrob Leonardo DiCaprio, for the past few years. But the spotlight on Maguire has grown bright in recent months, following wide acclaim for his work in the Civil War drama ``Ride With the Devil'' and all the Oscar momentum in the world for ``The Cider House Rules,'' even as Leo's star appears to be sinking off the poorly received ``The Beach.''

``I don't think of us as competitors,'' says Maguire, who has ended up appearing in movies DiCaprio turned down. ``I suppose there is some competition, but I feel more like we're all on the same team. I want someone like him, who's a great guy and a great actor, to do well. And many other actors, too. I look forward to seeing Ed Norton and Giovanni Ribisi's films, a lot of people my age who are talented.''

Ah, the idealism of youth. And the optimism. Maguire, who plays Grady's best writing student and most troublesome charge, says he has difficulty relating to ``Wonder Boys''' themes of blown chances and creative inertia.

``I'm not really worried about that,'' Maguire says. ``All I can do is work hard and try to choose wisely. To some extent, the results are out of my hands, but at the same time I'm fairly confident. And my confidence comes from faith; I just feel like I'll be taken care of.''

Director Hanson probably understands what it's like to be a wonder boy better than his stars do. Although he began making movies in the late 1960s, Hanson had done more screenwriting than directing before hitting the commercial jackpot with ``The Hand That Rocks the Cradle' in 1992. He'd received some polite acclaim as an astute, if minor latter-day Hitchcock before then. But his last picture, the period-noir spectacular ``L.A. Confidential,'' was the unexpected critical smash of 1997.

On the far side of 50, Hanson had suddenly attained auteur status. But his change-of-pace follow-up to that breakout work took awhile to present itself (``Wonder Boys,'' which is based on Michael Chabon's novel, was scripted by ``The Fabulous Baker Boys' '' Steve Kloves before Hanson came on board).

``Each of the characters in this story, even though they're not all writers, they're all the same in that they all have this yearning for connection and either past promise or future success, things that we all feel,'' the L.A.-raised director says. ``And yet they were funny. That's what the fun of it was.''

It was also fun to accent the story's romantic angle. When we first encounter the disheveled Grady, the latest in a series of much younger wives has just walked out on him, and he soon discovers that his married lover, played by ``Fargo's'' more age-appropriate Frances McDormand, is pregnant with his child. Not only did this provide a kind of built-in response to criticisms of Douglas' last movie, ``A Perfect Murder'' - in which his character was married to Gwyneth Paltrow - it also reflected humorously on the romance that was budding during production last winter between Douglas and Zeta-Jones, who is 25 years his junior.

``It was in the book, but we added dialogue to emphasize it,'' Hanson explains. ``To me, part of the confusion Grady has is that he's drawn to these beauties, but as Bob Dylan says in the song that he wrote for us, 'I'm in love with a woman that doesn't appeal to me.' ''

Douglas, who proposed to the Welsh actress on New Year's Eve and recently announced that they were expecting a child, has had more than his share of life-following-art experiences in the last year. While some of the press intrusion has rankled (Zeta-Jones was a tabloid target in her native Britain before coming to Hollywood), he understandably feels pretty darn ecstatic about the whole situation.

``The age difference thing disappears very fast in this kind of relationship,'' he notes. ``We don't even think about it anymore, although it's always there in the British tabloid press because they insist on putting your age in parentheses after your name. But it's not this insane thing; it's basically gone on throughout civilization, not just something that started with Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow. And there are, basically, genetic and other reasons why there's an age for women to have children and all that, and why men of all ages are attracted to them.''

Yes, regarding that...

``The prospect of being a dad again is just fabulous,'' says Douglas, who has an adult son from his multi-decade marriage to wife Diandra, from whom he separated several years ago. ``And obviously it's wonderful, because you don't have to tear yourself between career and family now. You feel like you've done it all, and although I love working, now I'll be able to focus that much more time on the kid and on the marriage.''

Wonder boy indeed. Speaking of which, didn't Hanson mention Dylan? The rock legend composed the film's title song, ``Things Have Changed.'' It's his first movie songwriting since Sam Peckinpah's 1973 ``Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.''

``Over the decades - I'm sad to say! - I've been a fan of his, and seen him more than any other performer by far,`` Hanson says of Dylan. ``I'd heard he'd liked 'L.A. Confidential,' and I'd always dreamed of working with him, so I figured this was the movie to approach him with. I mean, who is the quintessential wonder boy in the music world, a guy who has met that challenge of reinventing yourself?''

Through all of this celebratory wonderama, however, one sad note sounds. Shortly after returning to L.A. from the film's Pittsburgh location, Robert Downey Jr., who plays Grady's flamboyant editor, was sent to Corcoran State Prison for drug-related parole violations. It was a shockingly personal example of how even the most talented young artist - and all agree that Downey was terrific to work with - can lose his way.

``Robert has a problem; who knows if he'll ever lick it,'' laments Hanson, who visited Downey at the ominous institution during the holidays. ``I think that, in the future, people are going to look back on our era and go, 'What were they thinking, sending people with addiction problems to prison?' ''

Maybe some wonder boy will come up with a better way.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Boys of 'Wonder'

Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire ponder the nature of success

(2) Michael Douglas is fading writer/college professor Grady Tripp, who's having the worst - and best - day of his life in ``Wonder Boys.''