BEFORE: This is how January ends, with Michelle Pfeiffer carrying over from "Tequila Sunrise" to set up the February chain. Normally I'd put a film about troubled high-school kids in September, but since I'm having a clearance sale, plus who knows what I'll be watching come September, it ends up here as essential bridging material.
I watched some significant films in January, including one Best Picture winner and two of this year's hopefuls, but made little progress on the size of the watchlist. I had 194 films on the list on January 1, and at month's end there were still 193. At this rate I'll finish the project in...hold on now, divide by 12, carry the 1...crap, another 16 years. I was hampered by adding a bunch of Robert Redford and Jack Lemmon films, plus the newer films that the premium channels tend to run at the start of the year. Still, I've got to find a way to stop adding so many films and getting the list under control.
THE PLOT: An ex-Marine turned teacher struggles to connect with her students in an inner city school.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Lean on Me" (Movie #264), "Stand and Deliver" (Movie #265)
AFTER: All I can say is, thank God that inner city kids finally learned to read and appreciate poetry - glad to see that everyone's got their priorities in order. That's a valuable skill that's sure to help them later in life. I don't see what's "dangerous" about their minds, though - is this a reference to the Alexander Pope quote "A little learning is a dangerous thing"? Meaning that a small amount of knowledge can mislead people into thinking that they know more than they really do.
Films about teachers and inner-city youth were big in the late 1980's, and this one from 1995 seemed almost like an afterthought. Most of these films about classroom drama, including "Dead Poets Society", are the worst violators of the "Show, don't tell" rule. They literally have all the excitement of a parent/teacher conference. Witness the thrilling action as an instructor agonizes over a lesson plan! Maybe I've just watched so many action films this week that it makes a one-room drama look boring by comparison - I mean, nothing even blew up in this film!
Most people probably forgot this was turned into an ABC show that ran for 17 episodes back in 1996-97, and starred Annie Potts. I'm sure that probably answered all the lingering questions left from the film, like "How did she trick or bribe the students into learning after she ran out of Bob Dylan songs?"
Also starring Courtney B. Vance (last seen in "The Last Supper"), George Dzundza (last seen in "Crimson Tide"), Robin Bartlett, Wade Dominguez, Renoly Santiago, Lorraine Toussaint, with a cameo from John Neville (last seen in "The X-Files").
RATING: 3 out of 10 candy bars
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