This movie makes me want to barf

Rating: 1/10 (9 April 2009)

This is one of my least favorite movies ever: a movie geared towards people who don't really know anything about music, and as such, reveals its complete stupidity to those who do. Mr. Holland's Crappy Opus is the story of Mr. Holland, a cranky guy who's not a very good teacher, not a very good musician, not a very good husband and not a very good father. To put it mildly, he has no redeeming qualities.
He works for his whole life on this "OPUS," and when it finally gets performed, it's god- awful. It sounds like he wrote the soundtrack to a lame movie (except the people who really do write movie scores don't spend a whole lifetime on one film). How can you work on music composition your whole life, and still have no talent for it? Is it possible? Well, in the movies, anything's possible.
The movie seems to credit Mr. Holland with inventing the pep band, which makes him all the more despicable to me. When the pep band at my high school started playing "Louie, Louie," the kids at the game didn't cheer. They would roll their eyes, and/or vomit. No movie can make me believe that being in a marching band is cool. Drumline, this means you. I was in the marching band from 6th grade until high school graduation, and it was decidedly not cool.
There's also the pointless Rowena Subplot, which culminates in a gripping scene where Richard Dreyfuss's wife reads Rowena's name on a program, discovers that Rowena is not just a celtic mythology figure that her dorky husband is in love with and consequently makes a face. You'll be glued to your seat as a spectrum of emotions from stern disapproval to disapproving sternness passes through Mrs. Holland's face, and then the Rowena subplot proceeds to go precisely NOWHERE.
Mr. Holland "touches the lives" of all these students...and each life he touches is destroyed! He tells the redheaded girl to play the sunset; she becomes a miserable politician. He gives Rowena "voice coaching" (is that what the kids are calling it now?); she runs away, never to be seen again. He hits that football player kid on the head with a bass drum beater to teach him about rhythm. (Yes. The only black guy in the movie has to learn about rhythm from a white guy.) And that kid dies! The film's solitary saving grace is the fact that it introduced Alicia Witt who, after appearing in Mr. Holland's Stupid, Life-Sucking Opus, went on to become the cutest redhead I have ever seen. She can play my sunset any day. Or something.
But what's up with that scene where the hearing-impaired people "appreciate" music by watching idiotic flashing lights? Nice going, Mr. Jackass, you've just implied that deaf people are morons. Let's wait and see whether they thank you for touching THEIR lives, dickweed. I actually found myself rooting for William H. "This Is My Deal Here" Macy, the school's evil, conservative, buzzcut-sporting budget Nazi. "Go, Mr. Macy. Cut his budget! Cut it DOWN! The school needs three new football stadiums, not creative arts education! Burn those violins on the baseball diamond!" So, if you like movies that are just ill-conceived vehicles for 60s pop rock montages (blah blah blah, fake moon landing footage, blah blah blah, Martin Luther King Jr, blah blah blah) and scene after scene of Richard Dreyfuss being a jerk, run out and see Mr. Dickweed's Heinously Barfalactic Opus.