not as good as the hype makes it out to be...

Rating: 4/10 (28 March 2006)

I watched this film in English class this past week and I must say that I am a bit disappointed with what I saw. While many aspects of the film were perfectly engaging, I never felt grabbed by the story line, nor was I impressed with the script or, for that matter, actors.
Robin Williams' character was perhaps the biggest disappointment for me. While I have always failed to see the reason for the hype Williams so often receives, I have appreciated some of his more serious roles, such as his role as the neurologist in "Awakenings". I was completely underwhelmed by Williams' acting in this movie. It was almost as if he was trying too hard to be the "inspiring" teacher and in doing so ended up being completely melodramatic, in both his ideals and his voice (he drifted in and out of a VERY annoying accent of some sort.) I'm not entirely sure why Williams was nominated for an Oscar for this role...
The numerous clichés in the film also began to get to me after a while. I truly enjoyed the scenes where the boys were hanging out and talking. These were genuinely acted and scripted and were often very endearing. But the same is not true for the majority of the movie. I felt the teacher's teaching styles were almost too exaggerated for the movie. He would play some sort of game with the kids, they'd learn a lesson, and then be miraculously changed (an example of this was the whole "carpe diem" on the first day and how so soon after, everything became inspirational. Another scene that comes to mind is when the teacher helps the shy boy Todd Anderson create his own poetry.) There was no real work involved for this teacher. he uttered a couple of lines of poetry (and the most insipid and well known ones at that) and the boys were then "thinking for themselves".
I couldn't see the whole controversy about the "Society" itself anyway. Much of what the boys were doing was hanging out in a cave at night. while this was certainly a "discipline problem", it hardly seems to pose a threat of any sort to the school.
Anyway, I was overall underwhelmed by this film, but parts of it were OK.