Cliches, inept music, and bad acting - oh what fun.

Rating: 2/10 (13 December 1999)

My first complaint is one that can be applied to almost every popular movie about music, to whit, a movie about someone who has a passion for music should have competently written music in it. Also, there should be no flaws in musicology. If one is not going to get every detail right on music, one should make a movie about dinosaurs or middle-aged housewives meeting old college flames or hard-hearted cynics finding a spark of warmth in the world. One who is not willing to understand that in music, more than in any other field (besides rocket science), the devil is in the details.
However, that having been said, there are movies (Amadeus comes to mind) where the history and music were inaccurately portrayed but still worked as movies. Mr. Holland does not make up for the shortcomings. It is clicheed, poorly scripted, and not well acted. I cannot say that there is a great movie about passion for music driving a composer. Probably because popular romantic notions about artists and composers are silly and wrong to begin with, a movie based on such a flawed premise is destined to fail. Music is interesting, so study music, study music theory, study music history. Learn what makes good music good and bad music bad (it is not all that subjective). Do not waste time on inane pap like Mr. Holland's Opus.