Deep in the backwaters of BBC iPlayer there lurks an American film with an all-star cast that time forgot. In its day I think it was all but forgotten, too – garnering some critical acclaim but bombing at the box office, presumably because it was too clever or just didn’t appeal enough to teenagers (I can’t see why).

Fortunately, 25 years on, Wonder Boys, the campus-novel film starring Michael Douglas as a creative writing professor with writer’s block and an unravelling marriage, truly stands the test of time. You could even go so far as to say that it’s a modern classic.

Directed by the late Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile) and based on Pulitzer-prize winner Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, Wonder Boys turns on the events of a university’s literary festival where things go from bad to worse for Douglas’s protagonist, Professor Grady Tripp. Set in wintry Pittsburgh amid the snow – you could almost mistake it for a Christmas film – the unconventional plot is dotted with delicious flashes of surrealism, while the thing comes charging at you with more than a dash of Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim.

Described variously as a dark comedy or a comedy-drama, it offers a masterclass in........

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