My Wife Hated It

Actually you are wrong. The film is abt choosing your own destiny without the pressure of outside influences.

So what she (and you) basically felt the movie said, is precisely what it did not say, but what it challenged. Rather explicitly, in the scene where Julia Roberts meets Julia Stiles in her home. Why did you miss that?

at the time women could only choose one or the other. some of them wanted to forge through and choose a career instead of the expected marriage and kids route. it did highlight that problem. i didn't see disdain for the marriage choice, i saw the disappointment that the teacher felt for the students who didn't feel like they could fight for/want both. i can understand that in that character

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let's not go to camelot, it is a silly place

Count me in as one of the "dislike" camp. I saw it a decade ago and only remembered that it annoyed me, then I saw it again on cable last night and it helped me recall why.

Being derivative, trite, and contrived are among the worst of it's offenses.

Hmm. Any movie fan knows what superior film (about a free-thinking, unconventional, inspirational teacher at a conservative New England boarding school who clashes with the parents, straight-edged students, and staff) that the story of Mona Lisa smiles aspired to emulate.

And almost scene by unsubtle scene, I can just envision how the writer and the producers brainstormed to include a boatload of conservative 1950s establishment cliches which seems quaint and (sadly) humorous to us today, mostly at the expense of Wellesly I might add (yeah, we get it, Wellesly = just a conservative charm school).

My main objection is because it was obviously conceived, with the veneer of historical social change and "fighting the power", as a drama-vehicle for an expensive all-star cast in tidy little scenes supposedly demonstrating this important moral for us.

There is nothing wrong with good messages in movies or in art. But it is not especially bold, or eye opening, or original art to do it, 50 years after the epoch. Nor is it difficult to stick a fictional modern-thinking character into [choose a historical setting] and have him/her espouse ideas and established facts which seem prescient and revolutionary. "Slavery is bad? Bah, that's the way it's always been", "You're saying invisible little creatures are causing these infections? Hogwash", "Women? Given the vote? Preposterous!". This might have been the most influential film of the century had it been made much earlier.

I understand that the staunch defenders here that still found the message or the performances inspirational and that's ok. But to chastise us for not getting the subtleties of this very unsubtle movie? Uh.... yeah.

People seem to forget that Julia Stiles's character was a very SMART woman who CHOSE to stay at home. Whenever, I read reviews for this, people overlook her character. She decided to stay at home and not go to Yale and that's admirable.

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