Based on the novel by wunderkind Michael Chabon -- it's a comedy of errors in which washed-up novelist and potsmoking professor Grady Tripp, played by a rumpled Michael Douglas, rejects self-inflicted stupor, gains a sense of humor, and gets the right girl (a goofy and effervescent pregnant chancellor played by Frances McDormand). This movie is a romp through soggy academe, set in red-brick Pittsburgh, with some of the most disheartening weather since A Perfect Storm, and winning performances by Robert Downey Jr., Rip Torn, and others.

Havi Hoffman