MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS
[Spoilers]
A film review by Andy Jacob
Copyright 1996 Andy Jacob
I was not exactly excited about going to see Mr. Holland's Opus. I probably should have been working on notecards which are due for my term paper anyway. But I went ahead and saw it. After the first hour, I had high hopes for the movie, and even up to the last ten minutes I had high hopes for it, but then it just died. Like a person recovering from surgery better than anyone expected and then taking a turn for the worst. I'll get back to this later. One reason why I didn't want to see the movie in the first place is because it looked so corny. A music teacher taught at a school for 30 years. He had a son who was deaf. Everyone liked him. The end. Not my idea of a very exciting movie. However, the movie turned out to be more than that. There were many more pluses than there were minuses to the movie. Richard Dreyfuss certainly deserves an Oscar for his performance as Mr. Holland. Almost all of the things in the movie were realistic, which added to the serious atmosphere. The way the movie progressed was great. I liked the little segments where events of the time period were shown. The portrayal of Mr Holland's deaf son was excellant. And most of all, you really got the feeling that Mr. Holland loved music. However, despite all of the good things about the movie, the two major bad things killed it. First of all, it was too long. The middle of the movie was pretty much Mr. Holland teaching three different kids from three different time periods how to play music. It was nice for a while, but it got boring. Some time could have been cut out there. And the part about the girl singer trying to seduce Mr. Holland was way over the top. It just didn't fit in with the rest of the movie. Also, in real life, he would have been fired for encouraging her to run off to New York like he did. Finally, the worst part of all, was the ending. For those of you familiar with tennis, it was like a bad serve. When you "wind up", you build up a lot of kinetic energy in a coil behind your back. This is what gives the serve the power. If you effectively transfer the energy to the ball, you have a good serve. But if you bring your arm forward too soon, you lose the energy and it is all wasted. Your serve won't go anywhere. It doesn't matter how good of a windup you may have had, it doesn't matter in the end. That's what happened to this movie. It built up a lot of energy and had a lot of potential, but wasted it with a bad ending. It was just not fitting. The movie had a message. It was a message that most of the time the best people who touch almost everyone's life that they come in contact with never get any appreciation. At the end, the school where Mr Holland works cuts the music budget. When he finds out about it, he talks about how "you think you're cared about, but then you realize 'Wait. I made a mistake. I'm exspendable.'" Then he makes a comment while talking to the football coach that "the day they cut the football budged in this state is the day when culture in the western world as we know it will come to an end." This was great. It was setting up a good ending. Then, he's about to leave for the last time. He is walking out of his empty band room after looking around one last time, and he's walking down the hall. He'll walk out and leave and that's the end, right? No. Instead, there is a celebration in the auditorium with all of his former students. In the end he leaves conducting the symphony that he spent his whole life on. Everyone claps. Tears are flowing. Can we spell CORNY? While we're at it, why don't we spell UNREALISTIC. The movie would have been much better (even though it still would've been too long) if it would've ended with him walking out of the band room alone. It fits the message of the movie. That kind of ending is much more powerful. Despite the bad ending, the movie still brought up some points about society. And unlike many films these days, it had a message. It was actually a little bit serious. But a bad ending makes for a bad movie, and a bad movie is a bad movie. Well, the producers can look on the bright side. At least they've made a movie that band directors across the nation will see at least five times.
Andy's rating of Mr. Holland's Opus: ** 1/2
-------------------------- Rating system: **** Fantastic! Don't miss it! *** A good movie. Worth seeing. ** Ok. Average. Probably not worth seeing until it's out on home video. * Bad. Don't bother seeing it. x This movie is so bad that it should be burned. --------------------------
Andy Jacob
ajacob@liberty.uc.wlu.edu
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