The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)
Directed by Steve Kloves
The lives of two struggling musicians, who happen to be brothers, inevitably change when they team up with a beautiful, up-and-coming singer.
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What critics compared The Fabulous Baker Boys to
Kidman is sinuously sumptuous and, in her full-out rendering of a fabulous song and dance girl after a filmography as a pretty well straight dramatic actress brings to mind a similar breakout, that of Michelle Pfeiffer amazing the film world with talents never suspected in "The Fabulous Baker Boys".
At a party early in the film, Melinda flirts brazenly with a handsome young man named Joel (Brendan C. Miller), including a slinky run on a piano that’s just short of what Michelle Pfeiffer pulled off in The Fabulous Baker Boys .
His last film, the incendiary '50s underworld labyrinth ''L.A. Confidential,'' was the first to win him acclaim as an artist, and ''Wonder Boys,'' adapted by Steve Kloves (''The Fabulous Baker Boys'') from a 1995 novel by Michael Chabon, feels like an overly considered change up.
Because Wonder Boys is so skillfully driven by its characters and their realism rather than by a cookie-cutter plot or action sequences, Hanson and screenwriter Steve Kloves (The Fabulous Baker Boys) avoid the easy clichés of comedy and midlife crisis that would have diminished everything after the set-up.
Kloves is best known as a writer-director himself, with films such as The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) and Flesh and Bone (1993), quiet, intelligent films that allowed for rich character development and top-notch performances.
The screenplay (by Steve Kloves, "The Fabulous Baker Boys") is full of funny swipes at academic intelligentsia and other punchy asides as it weaves Grady into escalating, but never implausible, messes.
But Hanson and screenwriter Steve Kloves ("The Fabulous Baker Boys") have captured some of the flavor of the book.
The screenplay by Steve Kloves (" The Fabulous Baker Boys "), based on a novel by Michael Chabon , is European in its preference for character over plot.
Maybe now that he has made his fortune, he can write and direct another movie as good as The Fabulous Baker Boys.
Penned by J.K. Rowling herself, who historically turned that task over to acclaimed scribes like “The Fabulous Baker Boys”’ Steve Kloves, it can be narratively clumsy, stumbling over itself to start what, at heart, is a relatively simple tale.
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Pfeiffer nails the demanding long takes, and stick around for the credits, in which she sings the film’s song “Never Forget” with a breathiness and lovely vibrato reminiscent of her Oscar-nominated chanteuse in The Fabulous Baker Boys.
As boring and deadly as the last one was, it’s now obvious why director David Yates and ace screenwriter Steve Kloves (let’s pray that with Harry out of his system, this fine craftsman will get back to serious business of writing superior scripts, like his Wonder Boys, Flesh and Bone and The Fabulous Baker Boys) put us all to sleep with the plodding narrative details in Part 1.