lots of problems with this film

Rating: 1/10 (13 December 1999)

I am immediately skeptical when a movie about music or a musician is made. That is not to say that such a movie can't be made well; Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984) was both entertaining AND accurate, at least in terms of script details which pertained to music theory, performance and literature. Mr. Holland's Opus, however, falls miles short of this goal.
The myriad factual mistakes in the movie only lower my opinion. For one thing, it IS normal (in fact, necessary) to empty the spit valve of a brass instrument in mid-performance. For another thing, Mr. Holland lectures his students about Beethoven's deafness as if it were complete and nearly life-long, which it wasn't.
Mr. Holland himself is, as a character, unlikable through the entire movie. He is a less-than-stellar teacher who lacks the patience to do anything besides yell at his less-than-stellar students. He appears to be hard at work for a huge chunk of his life on this magnificent "opus." Upon hearing his work at the end, his composition is revealed to sound like something a dime-a-dozen Hollywood filmscore writer would vomit out in a couple of hours time.
This movie was made to appeal to devoted (however uneducated) music lovers. It's message is mixed, and therefor weak; at the end, the music program is cut from the school, resulting in not a victory for the community, but rather a tiny, meaningless, symbolic "victory" for Mr. Holland (who emerges only as victorious as finally hearing his mediocre "opus" performed live can make him). Furthermore, the young clarinetist who Mr. Holland tries so hard to cultivate ends up a politician rather than a musician, which suggests to me that Mr. Holland's stint as an educator has been completely fruitless.