Why this movie is NOT another bad Robin Williams showcase

Rating: 7/10 (9 August 1999)

Robin Williams has played a doctor, another doctor, a disk jockey, a toymaker, a loony scientist, and so on through a long list - each character somehow different from everyone else in his profession, each with a certain something that makes everyone else adore him, each obviously in possession of a huge ego, each given an opportunity to do some Robin Williams schtick, each determined to steal the movie at all costs. He's like that here, too. So what's the difference?
It's fourfold:
(1) Peter Weir is far from being my favourite director - he's capable of pretentious turkeys like "Picnic at Hanging Rock", for one thing - but he's not a hack. Weir makes it worth watching in a number of ways other than those mentioned below.
(2) If you see through the Cult of Williams and notice things which escape its adherents (Keating really IS a poor English teacher; the chapter he urges his students to tear out of their books is saying perfectly sensible things and at any rate, it's a strange thing to tell them to do under the guise of getting them to "think for themselves"; the hero-worship the students indulge in IS disturbing and unhealthy), it doesn't matter. The central story concerns the student Neil and how he acquires moral courage. It works as a story whatever attitude we take or ought to take towards Mr. Keating. The film is NOT just , "Why Robin Williams is right and everyone else is wrong."
(3) The villains ... actually, there aren't really any villains, and of the teachers who oppose Mr. Keating, one, at least, is both sensible and sympathetic. Robin Williams has true counterweights.
(4) Robin Williams does not sweep all before him in a wave of triumph. What triumph there is muted and limited in scope. Trust me: that's exactly what you want in this movie. The last thing you want to see is the Cult of Keating taking over the world.
"Dead Poets Society" is a fine movie so long as not too much is claimed for it. To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw: if you're under sixteen when you first see this movie and you don't feel that it will change your life, you have no heart; if you're over sixteen when you see it and you still feel that it will change your life, you have no head.
I was sixteen exactly. That lets me off the hook.