Sad movie except for Alan Pottinger's performance.

Rating: 7/10 (14 December 2005)

Mr Keating, a school teacher in a elite private school, uses his position to pursue a political agenda, namely to liberalize the school's curriculum, with tragic results. To achieve his political goals, the teacher encourages his students, all impressionable adolescents, to break the rules of the school, under the guise of promoting academic and personal freedom, and a group of his students respond by forming a secret society. These students have no idea that Mr. Keating is using them to promote strife between the faculty and student body, embarrass the school administration and thereby force change. As a result the students are placed in impossible conflictual situations that they are utterly incapable of resolving. Mr. Keating's manipulativeness is so blatantly reckless that it leads to one student committing suicide. Perhaps if Mr. Keating had communicated his concerns through appropriate administrative channels without involving the students, things would have worked out differently. But if that had happened, then there wouldn't have been a movie.
One bright point in this otherwise somber movie is Alan Pottinger's high-spirited and upbeat performance as "Bubba" the high-school jock.