Customer Reviews

Mona Lisa Smile

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Mona Lisa Smile is an inspiring film based on a time period when women are beginning to explore alternative roles in society other than the traditional roles of being a stay at home mother who concentrates on her husband's career and success--rather than her own. Julia Roberts and her fellow actresses explore the roles of women as Julia plays an art professor who sets out to academically enlighten a group of already well-educated, rich girls attending a finishing school. Through this enlightening process she helps several of the students find their way, broaden their horizons, and in the process finds herself. The movie deserves four stars because Julia's character not only lets the audience relate on a feminine level but on a humanitarian level as well. The viewer can truly imagine the Mona Lisa smiling, if she were to watch Julia Robert's performance in this movie.

As entertainment, "Mona Lisa Smile" has its strong points. After all, it features some of some of today's best actresses - Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Marcia Gay Harden. It has the look of the 1950s, which makes it a handsome period piece. The movie's central problems are its unsuccessful attempts to convey the real feeling of the period and its failure to create any truly memorable characters [the script's fault more than the performers']. While it wants to be seen as a historically accurate portrait of upper-middle class society fifty years ago, it winds being no more than an entertaining soap opera. [For a more astute vision of the period, watch the vastly superior "Far From Heaven" [2002]. For a searing portrait of a teacher in an all girls' school, check out 1969's "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie".]

Katherine Watson [Roberts], a recent UC Berkeley graduate, lands a job at Wellesley College, a prestigious East Coast women's college, as an art history teacher. She is impressed by her students' eagerness to learn, but appalled that, despite their academic excellence, their main ambition is to marry well. She begins a fairly benign campaign to get these women to realize that there might be other ambitions in life worth pursing. Her efforts make the college's president and its board of trustees uncomfortable to the point that her job is in danger. The students' responses range from acceptance to outright hostility.

The always delightful Roberts is miscast here. She is a joy to watch and gives one of her most mature performances, yet she comes off as an early 21st Century woman sent to the mid-20th Century to show these girls what the future will be like. This interpretation gives her character a certain smugness.

The supporting cast is uniformly excellent. Gyllenhaal nearly steals the movies as Giselle, a beautiful Jewish student, the only one who seems destined to be on the forefront of women's lib in years to come.

I loved this movie. It is a film all feminist women should see and I think they'll enjoy it as much as I did. I loved the acting by Julia and Kristen and was pleasantly suprised at how rude Kristen's character could be. If you're looking for a film with some what good portrayls of women this is it.

This was an empowering film to me. I loved how Julia Roberts' character, Katherine Watson, challenged these women into different ways of thinking. She helped them all to see what potential they have and that they didn't have to fit a binary of a woman in the 50s. Watson challenged every idea that these women were brought up with: the ideas that a woman's role was to serve her husband and keep house and home. Watson was a teacher ahead of her time and the fact that Julia Roberts played her character allowed Watson to come alive for me. This film was excellent and very well done.

I love Julia Roberts' glowing smile and infectious laugh, but this movie is just another cliché of the inspirational teacher. This time, it's not inner-city gang members, but privileged college girls at Wellesley who are motivated by a special teacher. I was pleasantly surprised by the ending, in which Julia Roberts' character admits that marrying and raising a family might not be evil incarnate after all.

I was very pleased with how this movie turned out (except the whole Bill situation could have been taken out. it didn't really match her ideals really..). When I saw previews for it, I knew at once I wanted to see it but was afraid Hollywood would ruin it. On the contrary, I was very moved.

I was really impressed how they addressed what is expected from all women, but also how all women are DIFFERENT. On one hand, there is Katherine Watson who believes women should not simply get married and have children, that there is "more to life" than motherhood. On the other hand, there is the university and most of its faculty and students who believe the opposite. And then there are the very few (or maybe one) in between who believe in possibilities... Though the character Katherine Watson has a noble agenda to change the rigid motherly ideals of the school, she has simply fled to the opposite extreme with rigid academic ideals.

Though this movie takes place in the 1950's, these themes are NOT irrelevent. Take it from a college girl herself (and many of my friends) - many of these expectations and pressures still exist in different forms. Replace Katherine with your high school, your peers, and your parents, and replace the Wellesley of the 1950s with your grandmothers, your aunts, your friends and you have MY life with a seemingly opposite but very similar struggle.

Therefore, I give this movie 5 stars. It realistically depicts the struggle that can still be seen in many women's lives today, but does not provide a cop-out answer for the masses. Like the analogy in the film of the paint-by-number sets, women are not cookie cutter shapes!

All the actresses in this movie did a wonderful job. Julia Stiles, Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and more.. I was easily able to relate to these characters, and their development is exceptionally interesting. This film holds much significance to those of us women who have lived it out in one way or another.

**1/2 In the wheezingly old-fashioned "Mona Lisa Smile," Julia Roberts joins the ranks of Robert Donat, Glenn Ford, Sidney Poitier, Sandy Dennis, Robin Williams, Edward James Olmos, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kevin Kline, all of whom have played inexperienced teachers who manage to win over and inspire their initially recalcitrant students. It matters not whether these pupils are hardened inner city gang types or snooty prep school geniuses, the arc of the story is always the same. The teacher, armed with a sense of optimism and a zeal to "make a difference" in the students' lives, arrives at the institution nervous and unsure of whether she is really up to the challenge (or "he" in the case of many of these films). After a predictably disastrous start, in which the students belittle her idealism and efforts and attempt to take advantage of her inexperience, the teacher invariably throws out the standard, stuffy, boring curriculum and finds a way to make learning relevant, fun and engaging. This, of course, makes her the most popular teacher at the school, but also a threat to the ossified educational establishment, which throws up endless roadblocks in an effort to keep this know-it-all upstart from upsetting the applecart. Undeterred, the teacher manages to get down to the students' level, rapping with them as if she were one of their own, helping to solve their problems and inspiring them to take their rightful place in society as freethinking, morally upstanding individuals. Then comes the inevitable moment when the teacher must decide, midway through the term, whether or not she will be returning for the next semester, with the student who gave the teacher the most trouble at the start pleading with her to stay on and work her magic for generations of students to come. All of this invariably culminates in a tear-soaked finale wherein all the students gather in worshipful adoration of this almost godlike embodiment of Learning. A number of the movies that have utilized this storyline have been quite good, actually, but "Mona Lisa Smile" is not one of them. By bringing nothing particularly new to the formula, the film can't help feeling derivative and clichéd. Where is Miss Jean Brodie when we really need her?

"Mona Lisa Smile" begins in 1953 with Katherine Anne Watson's arrival as an art history instructor at Wellesley College. The school, as it turns out, is a haven for elite snobs - and its educational philosophy of rote, tradition-bound learning shows that the school is more concerned with turning the girls into dutiful, supportive wives and mothers than freethinking career women (the only classes we ever see the girls attending are art history, Italian, table setting and synchronized swimming, not exactly a rigorous course of study for a bunch of young ladies we are led to believe graduate with some pretty impressive degrees). Enter Katherine Anne, fresh from a state school in "liberal" California, who clearly does not buy into the false value system she finds here. After some initial resistance on the part of the girls and the powers-that-be at the institution, Katherine begins, slowly but surely, to win people over to her modernistic, iconoclastic way of thinking.

As a social document, "Mona Lisa Smile" is yet another film dedicated to exposing the "Stepford Wife" mentality of the conformist 1950's. The problem is that "Far From Heaven" did a much better job of that two years ago. In that film, the main character experienced a gradual awakening as to both her value as an individual and the societal prison in which she lived. During the course of the film, we grew along with her. Katherine, on the other hand, feels like a 21st Century woman transported magically to the 1950's. Not that there weren't such forward-looking women at the time, of course, but it's not very illuminating watching a person, spouting ideas no one in the audience could possibly disagree with, bringing knowledge and enlightenment to the ignorant masses. The acting is good but the characters are all either shallow stereotypes or straw men designed for Katherine to knock down easily. Ironically, the film is every bit as conventional as the conformity it's railing against.

Now that Ms. Roberts has gotten the Messianic Teacher Syndrome out of her system, perhaps she can move on to bigger and better things. This particular hole in her resume has at last been filled.

Some parts of this movie are just plain boring. But I give it 3 stars because some parts are interesting.

I could see why some people would and wouldn't like this movie. But for me, I absolutely loved it. It was inspiring, and wonderful, and yes, even though Kirsten Dunst's character was a bit confusing, I thought it was a very good movie overrall. You don't get to see many teachers try and change their students's life around. It's all about textbooks and following the directions to the exact point. But I thought Julia Roberts, was perfect for the role and she pulled it out perfectly. But with that being said, there were also some glitches. It was surprising that there was a lesbian in the film and that Kirsten Dunsts's character was so unkind to Julia Roberts and towards the last 10 minutes of it them being good friends! (they didn't even have any apologies just of them going on with their lives.) That could have been handled a bit better. But overall, I was happy with it. You should definitely rent it first rather then buy it. You should do that with any movie anyways.

3 stars for three reasons: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles, and Marcia Gay Harden. (I loved Topher Grace's appearance too, but there wasn't enough of him to warrant 4 stars.) What about Julia Roberts, you ask? Well, Julia Roberts is a great actress, no doubt about it. But she just didn't fit the role. Another reviewer said it well -- she's just too modern to be in a movie taking place in the '50s.

Roberts plays Katherine Watson, a pre-feminism feminist who goes to Welsley College as an art history teacher, hoping to make a difference in the young women's lives. During her stay at the school, a few students stand out in her class -- Elizabeth Warren (Kirsten Dunst), Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles), Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Connie Baker (Gennifer Goodwin). The movie focuses on these five women -- Elizabeth's struggle to be the perfect 1950s housewife, despite her husband's lack of interest in being her husband; Joan's dilemma about whether to attend Yale University or marry her boyfriend (Topher Grace); Giselle's struggle with her reputation, as well as harboring feelings for a professor; Connie's struggle to, well, to love herself; and Katherine's struggle to bring the young women around to her feminist point of view.

The problem with this movie is that, apart from being cliched, Katherine Watson is not a very likeable person. She constantly tries to force others into her way of thinking, particularly Joan. Joan makes a decision in the movie that shocks Katherine, who does not for a second consider that maybe Joan's choice was what made her happy. Add Katherine's completely unconvincing romance with a fellow teacher (the same object of Giselle's affections) and you have a boring, unlikeable central character.

However, some of the students are very engaging and likeable. Elizabeth makes a startling transformation by the end that is actuall quite believable. Giselle -- well, she's played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who is emerging as one of the best young actresses in Hollywood. This alone will make you like her character, but Giselle in her own right is a good person who is just lonely. Connie is the most endearing character -- you can't help but root for her. Joan is one you can respect, and she is played by the very respectable Julia Stulies. In all, the students were much better characters than Katherine.

However, there is one as-yet-unmentioned character -- that of Katherine's housemate, Nancy Abbey, played by Marcia Gay Harden. Nancy is a great character -- graceless, yet sympathetic, enshrouded in such a cloud of sadness that we wonder throughout the movie if she might be a bit mad. Marcia Gay Harden is absolutely terrific in this movie, and outshone Julia Roberts in every scene they appeared in together.

This movie is certainly not innovative or clever, and as I've stated several times, the central character is not very endearing. However, it does have its feel-good moments, and the young actresses are outstanding. Recommended if there's nothing better on. You probably won't wonder in horror where your last two hours went, but you certainly won't be thinking about it for long after the movie ends.