MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS
A film review by John Schuurman
Copyright 1996 John Schuurman
Directed by: Stephen Herek Reviewed by John Schuurman
Now I am not proud to say it, but I'll admit my eyes have welled up with tears at "Little House on the Prairie" reruns and so you might not want to take the following too seriously, but this movie had me dabbing and daubing and wiping away from about fifteen minutes in. I don't know when I have been to a movie that had its way with me like this one. A couple of hours removed, it seems a little silly to be affected so, but I want to go once again and wait for the last scene.
It is a "school movie" dealing as such movies do with the heaves and hos of teaching. At the outset the viewer expects the usual formula of an idealistic teacher arriving in a tough school and, after some initial disappointments, working a wonder through that magical mixture of pluck, toughness and tenderness. Well, only some of that is here. Which parts aren't important. The parts of the formula that are not here, are refreshingly absent.
What is important about the movie is that it shows us the essential truth that meaning in life comes through sacrifice and faithfulness rather than individual dream pursuit. I am sorry for the way that sounds and want to promise you that you will delight in the movie despite that dreary sentence. But that it is about and you will love it.
This movie will make you want to search out and do something gracious for those career teachers who could have made other choices and who no doubt wanted to but didn't.
Richard Dreyfuss gives a career performance.
for more reviews by John Schuurman http://www.mcs.com/%7Esjvogel/wcrc/movies.html
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews