Curtis Hanson’s “Wonder Boys” (2000) is my college movie, the film I look to when I think back to not only the professors who inspired me as a student but also those I worked alongside as a young college lecturer.

The last time I saw “Wonder Boys,” it was three years ago, at a point when its characters were all very real figures in my life.

I was working on my master’s degree and had to write an extensive analysis on the film, comparing it to Michael Chabon’s source novel. At the time, I was also working as a film lecturer at a Colorado university.

I was knee deep in the world of academia, spending my days either in front of a classroom or typing madly and working on papers for my professors. The experience of being a student, while teaching my classes and spending time with teachers who were both my instructors and my colleagues, made for a multi-faceted perspective on campus life.

If there’s anything that “Wonder Boys,” both Chabon’s casually brilliant 1995 novel and Curtis Hanson’s terrific movie, understands is that college life has a hermetically sealed feel.

When you’re having rich conversations with academic giants on Faulkner, Proust and Eisenstein, witnessing great student films and feel inspired just being around people who ache to write, let alone read, The Next Great American Novel, the rest of the world feels bland in comparison.

The film’s protagonist, Grady Tripp, is someone whose spirit has been embodied in a handful of mentor/colleagues I’ve known. He’s the classic college professor, dressed in a rumpled jacket, who wears a scarf even when it’s unneeded and seemingly never speaks a word that isn’t carefully, cleverly chosen.

Michael Douglas plays him, and it’s a real beauty of a performance. Alongside his work in “Wall Street” (1987), “Falling Down” (1993), The Game” (1997), “Solitary Man” (2009) and “The War of the Roses” (1989), Douglas once again conveys his character’s painful flaws and tender vulnerability.

He allows us to see why Tripp, this wounded lion of a man, is brilliant, loved and respected.

Co-starring as James Leer, his deeply troubled but extraordinary student, whose messy life makes Tripp’s existence even more impossible, is Tobey Maguire. The soulfulness in Maguire’s work matches the pathos in Douglas’ characterization.

Together, they create a teacher/student equivalent of a platonic “Harold and Maude” (1971). As if that weren’t enough, there’s also excellent, juicy character turns by Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand, Rip Torn and Richard Thomas.

Katie Holmes plays Tripp’s other star student, a gifted writer who recognizes the brilliance and shortcomings in Tripp, her mentor and crush. Holmes has deservedly received acclaim for her work in “Pieces of April” (2003) and “The Gift” (2000) but this is her finest work as a character actress.

She and Maguire come across like bright-eyed students with bohemian hearts, not the Hollywood actors we know them as.

I can’t help comparing Hanson’s film to Chabon’s novel and will briefly mention that the film makes changes that don’t help it. A lengthy passage from the book, involving Jewish customs and Tripp’s horrible approach to relationships, is missed. So is the book’s ending, replaced here with an Everybody Wins fadeout that replaces Chabon’s perfectly sad-but-true conclusion.

“Wonder Boys” just misses perfection as a film but the end result is so rich in character, unpredictable and frequently hilarious, it stands as a nice companion to the novel.

It didn’t do well in theaters but deserves to accumulate a cult following. When the plot includes a bizarre shooting, a whirlwind of runaway book pages, a pot-smoking college professor and a jacket worn by Marilyn Monroe play into the story, a cult following is practically inevitable.

Aside from its stature as a rare example of a comedy both funny and uncommonly intelligent, I loved the film because it knows its characters and the world they inhabit, capturing campus life with astute observations.
This movie takes me back to the colorful teachers and students I’ve known, both intimately and barely.

There’s something vivid, and familiar about the passions, tortured secrets and flower power beauty of these characters.

I’ve known all sorts of college Wonder Boys, with their grandiose ideas, jazz-like ability with casual conversation and their contradictory blend of optimism and self-defeating doubt. It’s a joy to be a part of that world, something this movie gets completely.