Introducing the "I Hated Dead Poets Society" Society

Rating: 4/10 (17 September 2005)

Oh-so-"strict", repressive boys' prep school. Kewl teacher arrives. Kewl teacher gets pupils to like poetry (sic) and say "carpe diem" a lot. One commits suicide because of his strict, repressive, killjoy Dad. Kewl teacher sacked. Pupils make meaningless gesture of solidarity and feel smug about it. End of film.
It's a long time since I saw it, so I may have missed something out. But you get the idea.
I wouldn't have bothered to add a comment, only I was taken aback when checking the other comments, to find there was, in the first two pages at least, not a single user recorded as having disliked this movie as I did.
It's empty, fatuous stuff, pandering to "nobody understands me" adolescent whining, and cynically pushing an innocuous, market-friendly brand of smug irresponsibility in the guise of "non-conformity". How well the movie teaches non-conformity can be perhaps best judged by the other user comments: a chorus of sheeplike "carpe diem, yeah! right on!"s with not a single original insight anywhere to be seen.
"Cease the day" I especially liked. And the carpe diem teeshirt idea. This movie seems so made for ruminants, maybe it should come with a foot-and-mouth jab.
As a matter of verifiable fact, no English teacher in the history of the world has ever succeeded in getting a significant number of pupils to like poetry. I say "verifiable", because if it were otherwise, published (live) poets would be able to live comfortably off their royalties. As another matter of verifiable fact, telling kids to rip pages out of books does not garner teachers "respect", only contempt - there's always a critical mass of students in any class who are at least intelligent enough to see through a poser.
This is a McMovie if ever there was one.