A Shell of Profundity--Please watch it again...It's not as good as you thought

Rating: 5/10 (15 April 2006)

First, let me recommend Roger Ebert's review on this movie--he generally sums up the problems I have with it. The great American poet Wallace Stevens (who thankfully does not join the list of other great poets bastardised by this movie) wrote many aphorisms in his journals which were published posthumously; in one of those aphorisms he poignantly claimed that "sentimentality is the failure of feeling." Dead Poet's Society is cloyingly sentimental. I wince at so many moments: references made to poems that the writers evidently had no deep connection with, scenes contrived for the sole purpose of providing Robin Williams with a stage for his stand-up comedy jokes and impressions, and a suicide motivated by formulaic and totally un-compelling issues. Please watch it again...It's not as good as you thought.