How a Music Teacher Digs Deeply to Help Teens Succeed

Rating: 10/10 (14 March 2005)

This movie follows the career of a frustrated composer (played to perfection by Richard Dreyfuss) who couldn't earn a full-time living as a band member. The movie starts when he begins a new career as the music teacher at a small-town high school to pay his rent. He quickly comes to realize it's not only high school students who don't want to be in class, but also their teachers. A series of very unmusical students with a variety of motivations implore him to find a way to teach what appear to be hopeless cases to become competent at their instruments. This forces him to dig much deeper into the teens' psyche and his own soul to invent ways to help the teens succeed. I found it very admirable the way he learned to control his verbal responses to kids who seemed so untalented and so far beyond the possibility of redemption. He bit his tongue and came up with positive responses that were honest yet gently guided the teens towards the discovery of possibilities no one even knew that they were capable of. As the parent of a teen, I can tell you this is very hard to do, and I really appreciated the lesson the movie teaches by example! I found it very inspiring the way these experiences impacted the teens involved as they grew to adulthood and beyond, and I believe such lessons could be very impactful on junior high age students who may be struggling in one subject or another at school, and on their parents. I'd highly recommend this film to benefit the parents of kids in the 10 to 16 years of age range, as well as to junior and senior high school teachers of any subject.
The story also shows how he inspires one very talented student, aptly played by the lovely Jean Louisa Kelly, to discover her inner voice and pursue her musical ambitions. To me, this film would have been worth seeing on the strength of her charming performance and beautiful singing voice alone. I think she'd make a great ingenue as Christine in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera, for example, and I hope she gets that opportunity some day. I'd also love to see her opposite Josh Groban performing a musical duet, that would be magical indeed.