...engaging and discerning culture, as a way of life...

November 18, 2005

School Ties - 5

This film tries to be a touching story of a all boys prep school in the 1950's. It ends up being a morality tale in which the point is that prejudices against Jews is not good. It does such a bad job of showing the prejudice, one is not likely to actually believe that. There really isn't that big of a struggle from the audiences point of view, and Brendan Fraser, who plays the main character David, can't pull of the emotion to make this work. The film does point to the reality of prejudice that was prevalent in the 50's, but needs to better show the cultural worldview of this thinking rather than some sort of internal struggle of individuals. Not a bad film just not good enough to recommend. This film is how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck got their starts in acting, and obviously learned something about storytelling when they wrote Good Will Hunting (a much better film).

No comments: