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Mr. Holland's Opus
A terrific Oscar-nominated performance by Richard Dreyfuss notwithstanding, 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus is a pretentious, predictable, and fatally overlong epic about another dedicated teacher featuring a cliched screenplay that brings nothing new to the "dedicated teacher movie" cinematic table.
We are introduced to Glenn Holland during the turbulent 1960's, a composer who reluctantly takes a position as the music teacher at a high school in order to pay the bills and the so-called "profound effect" he has on his students and vice versa, that actually plays into the 1990's when the music program at the school gets eliminated due to budget cuts and Holland loses his job after 30 years.
This is another one of those movies that scores in terms of intentions but ultimately loses the moviegoer with Patrick Sheane Duncan's cliched and manipulative screenplay which finds our hero casting magical spells over every single student he comes in contact with, even though his heart is allegedly not in it. I had to bust out laughing when one of clarinet students, who couldn't play four measures of music without squeaking, returns at the end of movie where it is revealed she is now the governor. The story also loses points when it is revealed that Holland's teaching did not leave him enough time to learn how to sign properly in order to communicate with his deaf son. This is did not endear me to the character at all.
Every single dedicated teacher cliche you've seen in the movies in the past 50 years gets recycled here...there's the lecture from the school principal (Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis) about resenting people who consider teaching "something to fall back on", saving the school wrestling hero (Terrance Howard) from losing his spot on the team by teaching him how to play the bass drum to the pretty and talented soprano (Jean Louisa Kelly) who gets a crush on Mr. Holland, but that doesn't stop her from boarding a bus to New York at Holland's encouragement. This kind of stuff was addressed way back in 1967 with To Sir with Love and was done much better in that movie.
Stephen Herek, whose directorial credits include Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Critters seems to be a little out of his element here. The direction is heavy-handed and manipulative and the film definitely tries to cover too much territory, evidenced in a lack of continuity that manifested itself in one major goof that I noticed: there's a scene where Holland's wife, Iris (the late Glenne Headley) is checking the program of the Gershwin revue her husband mounted because she wants to see the name of the pretty soprano and the program says that the girl's theater credits included "The Wiz", a musical that features an all-black cast. Jean Louisa Kelly is not black. This documented for me that Herek was just out of his element here.
On the positive side, Dreyfuss is absolutely superb in the only performance of his to earn an Oscar nomination outside his win for The Goodbye Girl and I have to credit Dreyfuss for doing his homework here. He was very convincing as a musician and especially as a conductor. His conducting was on the money and far superior to JK Simmons' conducting in Whiplash. I was also impressed with William H. Macy as the tight-assed Vice Principal and Joseph Anderson as his teenage deaf son, but I can't recall the last time I had such high expectations for a movie and was more disappointed.
A terrific Oscar-nominated performance by Richard Dreyfuss notwithstanding, 1995's Mr. Holland's Opus is a pretentious, predictable, and fatally overlong epic about another dedicated teacher featuring a cliched screenplay that brings nothing new to the "dedicated teacher movie" cinematic table.
We are introduced to Glenn Holland during the turbulent 1960's, a composer who reluctantly takes a position as the music teacher at a high school in order to pay the bills and the so-called "profound effect" he has on his students and vice versa, that actually plays into the 1990's when the music program at the school gets eliminated due to budget cuts and Holland loses his job after 30 years.
This is another one of those movies that scores in terms of intentions but ultimately loses the moviegoer with Patrick Sheane Duncan's cliched and manipulative screenplay which finds our hero casting magical spells over every single student he comes in contact with, even though his heart is allegedly not in it. I had to bust out laughing when one of clarinet students, who couldn't play four measures of music without squeaking, returns at the end of movie where it is revealed she is now the governor. The story also loses points when it is revealed that Holland's teaching did not leave him enough time to learn how to sign properly in order to communicate with his deaf son. This is did not endear me to the character at all.
Every single dedicated teacher cliche you've seen in the movies in the past 50 years gets recycled here...there's the lecture from the school principal (Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis) about resenting people who consider teaching "something to fall back on", saving the school wrestling hero (Terrance Howard) from losing his spot on the team by teaching him how to play the bass drum to the pretty and talented soprano (Jean Louisa Kelly) who gets a crush on Mr. Holland, but that doesn't stop her from boarding a bus to New York at Holland's encouragement. This kind of stuff was addressed way back in 1967 with To Sir with Love and was done much better in that movie.
Stephen Herek, whose directorial credits include Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Critters seems to be a little out of his element here. The direction is heavy-handed and manipulative and the film definitely tries to cover too much territory, evidenced in a lack of continuity that manifested itself in one major goof that I noticed: there's a scene where Holland's wife, Iris (the late Glenne Headley) is checking the program of the Gershwin revue her husband mounted because she wants to see the name of the pretty soprano and the program says that the girl's theater credits included "The Wiz", a musical that features an all-black cast. Jean Louisa Kelly is not black. This documented for me that Herek was just out of his element here.
On the positive side, Dreyfuss is absolutely superb in the only performance of his to earn an Oscar nomination outside his win for The Goodbye Girl and I have to credit Dreyfuss for doing his homework here. He was very convincing as a musician and especially as a conductor. His conducting was on the money and far superior to JK Simmons' conducting in Whiplash. I was also impressed with William H. Macy as the tight-assed Vice Principal and Joseph Anderson as his teenage deaf son, but I can't recall the last time I had such high expectations for a movie and was more disappointed.