Rather Contrvied Storyline with an Embarrassingly Bad and Cliché-Ridden Piece at the End

Rating: 4/10 (17 April 2016)

I guess "Mr. Holland's Opus" was supposed to be about an inspirational music teacher throughout his career to give the audience tears of sentimental joy. As a classical musician, all I can say is "Oh brother". There are some really fine films in this sub-genre about teachers, mentors, or coaches engaging with students, athletes, etc., including "Dead Poet's Society", "Hoosiers", and probably the finest one, "Stand and Deliver". "Stand and Deliver" was based on a real teacher who found creative ways to speak and teach to minority students struggling in East Los Angeles. As far as I know, "Mr. Holland's Opus" wasn't based on a real music teacher, and too many of the incidences shown were clearly written by people who knew next-to-nothing about the music universe.
Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) is an aspiring musician who has dreams of making it big as an established composer. He then takes a position at a high school as their music teacher as a means to compose. Of course, the inevitable "resentment" of the other faculty emerges as he proves to be one of the most popular teachers in the school. Simultaneously, the faculty constantly belittle the value of teaching music in the classroom. As a classical musician myself, I applaud the idea of an inspirational music teacher fighting for the importance of the arts and music public high schools. However, I found the premise so obviously contrived I couldn't help saying to myself "oh dear Lord" in many scenes. I was in high school when there was drastic cutting of arts and music funding, but I never found the faculty dismissive of the music teachers.
One of the other terrible aspects of this film is whoever produced it didn't bother to simply hire a bona fide orchestral conductor and show Dreyfuss how to conduct. While I will agree Dreyfuss' performance is relatively good given the material, his conducting is absolutely god-awful. The upbeat cue to begin a piece is completely incorrect. You don't just start slide into it after a couple of little beats. You actually take a virtual "breath" and clearly indicate the cue beat which signals the performers to begin. And he constantly moves his upper body up and down with the beat as he conducts, which is complete no-no as it's distracting to the performers. If the character is supposed to be this amazing musician, why does it seem like he never took conducting in college?
While he's teaching during many years, he's writing "An American Symphony" on the side, supposedly his magnum opus. At the end of the film, as a tribute to him, many of his former students, now adults, produce a concert to play his "opus". And then it's really OMG, this is so bad. His final piece is a silly ultra-cliché-ridden little monster masquerading as a "great orchestral work". All the melodies sound like overused tracks from bad films from the 1970's, including an unremarkable string theme, used ad infinitum on many pieces and songs from the mid-20th century. Also the piece is not truly orchestrated in terms of varying the instruments. All the instruments play "tutti" constantly, in other words, all the instruments play during the whole piece. This is not how orchestral works are written. The music should vary with different instruments playing melody and harmony in different passages, otherwise the piece becomes monotonous, which literally means "sounding the same". In great works, only in a few dramatic moments does an orchestra play tutti. And the drum section only makes the whole thing sound pop-oriented; I couldn't take it seriously. The Opus really does sound like a high school student's first stab at writing an orchestral work. It doesn't even sound good enough for the Boston Pops who were always playing very light orchestral music. Unfortunately, Holland's "opus" wasn't even so bad it's good. Even rock songs from the 1980's are more easily tolerated than the "Opus".
The good films in this genre have a lot of bite and grit in them, particularly "Stand and Deliver" and "Dead Poet's Society". Both deal with social and societal issues. Some of the best, like "Stand and Deliver" were based on true-life experiences. However, "Opus" is too saccharine and contrived for its own good. While Mr. Holland deals with his student's problems, I never got the sense the story was real but rather artificial and written by people who didn't really know this subject. And the Opus at the end proved that Holland really wasn't that great a composer. He's lucky he received his job in the first place! Of course, there are many fans of this film, and I am sure I've caused many grievances with this review. However I can tell you, no matter how much this film may "move you", this is not what I experienced as a classical musician in school. There's a lot more blood, sweat and tears than what's shown here. Students don't always listen to the teacher, sometimes playing when they shouldn't be. Some teachers berate lesser-skilled players. Playing music in educational institutions is not the easiest of tasks including both student and teacher alike, but I don't believe the makers of "Mr. Holland's Opus" quite understood that.