Love/hate review

Shanna's Journal - Movie Monday

The History Boys -- I had a love/hate response to this movie. The dialogue is great and the performances are wonderful, but I felt like it totally disintegrated at the end into your standard Inspiring (But Troubled) Teacher Story. Upon further thought, I realized that what I liked most about it was the really rigorous and exciting-sounding education, since my history teachers were all coaches who followed the advanced pedagogical method of making us read the chapter in the textbook and answer the questions at the end while they read the newspaper sports section. The cliches were all the way through the movie, but I only really noticed them when the story turned almost entirely away from the teaching and focused on the personal relationships. I was a little icked-out at the implication that what made this teacher so inspiring was the fact that he was a little in love with his students, and the mean old administrator just couldn't get over the fact that he was caught fondling a student in public.