Avoid if you have the ability to hear, think, or breath...

Rating: Null/10 (15 April 2001)

*May contain spoilers even though the movie is so cheesily predictable that they aren't really a suprrise*
I can't see the big deal about this movie. It didn't appeal too much to me. The acting was horrible with an exception of Dreyfuss, and the story was weak and cliched. Yet most of the commentaries on this board loved it. They said it made them cry, and think. This movie didn't provoke a tear from me.
Mr. Holland who is supposed to be SUCH a wonderful composer, takes a job at some kind of school teaching a music appreciation class. He is a horrible teacher. How can you expect some kids who don't know how to play their instruments to be freaking Mozart after one day? He's completely impatient and just plain mean. For instancewhen they had their first test, he gave out the student's names and mocked what they put as answers.
Oh and the scene where Holland is helping Miss. Lang how to play her clarinet. The child has been playing the thing for 3 years and she can't get out a note. He tells her to think of the sunset, and suddenly she can play perfectly. I know that we wouldn't want him to sit there and analyze every single thing that she's doing wrongbut being a saxophone player, I know that that is completely impossible. Plus it just added extra cheese to this soppy little movie. Then later on we find out that Miss Lang has become a mayor and never even used her `talent'. I also find it hard to believe that the whole class of 75 still has their instruments in perfect condition, let alone still knows how to play them.
The whole scene with the deaf band playing instruments is ridiculous. What is the point of the board with the flashing lights on it? They could have kept that money in the budget to keep the arts open in that school. What was the point of that board? You don't have to be able to hear to play instruments. Just blow and read your music
What really made me angry was the lack of any kind of ethnic characters in this movie. There are two black people in this movie I believe. On is the dumb, stereotypical football player who needs music because he is flunking all of his classes. And the ridiculous thing about it is that this black football player has NO rhythm and has to get MR HOLLAND to help him. What black teenage boy do you know doesn't have any rhythm and need an old white man to help them? And then later on I guess there were too many black people in the movie, so they had to kill him off in Vietnam. So then it was back down to all no black people. Just the way that America likes it.
The acting is below par. The only people that did anywhere near a good job were Richard Dreyfuss and Jean Louisa Kelly. Ms. Kelly had a beautiful voice, but that whole thing where she was in love with Dreyfuss was ridiculous. Glenne Headly couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag, and seeing her with Dreyfuss made her look even worse. Seeing her in that scene where she had a tantrum when she couldn't understand Cole was more funny than emotional. William H. Macy is generally a decent actor, but his character was so overly stereotypical and nasty that I just didn't care for him. Olympia Dukakis is usually good, but in this movieshe wellwasn't. Alicia Witt did a good job with the young Gertrude Lang as well. Joseph Anderson did a very good job as the 15 year old Cole. Is he really deaf? He made it very believable. The rest of the castdon't get me started on them