Worthwhile Film (** Spoilers **)

Rating: Null/10 (26 July 2000)

The statement, "Better in execution than design," appropriately encapsulates "Good Will Hunting." Despite an apparent brilliance and creativity in discrete scenes and sequences, examined generally and on a macro level, the film's plot and directional structure lack severely. However, the characterizations, dialogue, and overall mise-en-scene project a unique tendency similarly absent in both mathematics films (recall "Stand and Deliver" as a blasé manifestation of mathematical concepts to an audience) and "Boy Wonder" pictures (movies with a genius-laden protagonist; most are, much like mathematics films, merely adequate and not passionate about the qualities of their main characters).
The most effective parts of "Good Will Hunting" show the conflict between two sets of parallel individuals: Will and Chuckie, and Professors Lambeau and Maguire. The intense and latent rivalry between the two academics describes a potential future for the two twenty-year-olds. Maguire consistently, at least on a superficial basis, searches for the default respect the MIT mathematician receives. Will, although reticent and clearly an outcast, seeks a similar form of respect, although not for his academic qualities, but for his social abilities. Throughout "Good Will Hunting," both pairs of spotlighted characters, after a series of enlightening "adventures," become comfortable with themselves. Despite this banal-sounding narrative flow, the execution is mostly interesting and often unpredictable.
Similar to "Jackie Brown," "Clerks," and "Pulp Fiction," lines in "Good Will Hunting" sound realistic, albeit on a near-poetic and superlative level. Anecdotal portions of the dialogue are given a relaxed temporal frame with which to develop. (A standout instance is Skylar's last-wish tale.) Although the strong propensity toward vulgarities and obscenities is evident, it almost is rendered justifiable; lines are well constructed to "ease the fit" of the negative language that in many other films is overtly unnecessary and inappropriate.
The lyrical music, which relies on short minor-key short melodies rather than grand designations (a John Williams or James Horner variant), is appropriate for the film and functions effectively as a "personal score" for Will Hunting. Danny Elfman, who composed "Bettlejuice," "Men in Black," and "Batman," has rarely shown restraint in his music. The reticent notes support the characterizations rather than defining them (as his other works have often accomplished).
Other than the mostly mediocre diagesis, the film's largest fault is the treatment of its logic in its supposed-main topic: mathematics. Ignoring the errors in the content (a Fourier series, the professor claimed, was to be the first problem on the hallway chalkboard. Instead, simple undergraduate Linear Algebra appears. Of course, this lapse is not noticed by most of the audience, and it does not alter the piece in any respect), more serious errors surface: If Will was another Ramajidan, as Lambeau claims, why was he not given any queries on anything more than an undergraduate level? How about assigning Hunting unsolved problems, like the Goldbach Conjecture or the Reimann Hypothesis? Certainly such mathematical questions should be enough to challenge a truly gifted mathematician.