* There are no *specific* spoilers, but some *conceptual* notions that might be considered spoilers* Julia Roberts finds herself at a perplexing crossroads in her career. She's edging beyond the era of the "Pretty Woman" roles, yet hardly ready for the role of matron. "Mona Lisa Smile," where she plays a college instructor heading to the conservative east coast, seems the perfect vehicle for Roberts to make a transition; unfortunately, the result is a bumpy ride in which Roberts herself seems decidedly uncomfortable, and one that becomes only a faint reflection of its opposite-gender inspiration, "Dead Poets Society." Roberts plays Katherine Watson, a liberal-minded west-coast art teacher who finds herself with the opportunity to take over a similar position at Wellesley College, an ultraconservative women's college in 1953. Watson arrives, hoping to "make a difference" in the lives of some of the smartest women in the country by extending the notion of "traditional" attitudes about art to attitudes about life, and the life of women in particular.
Roberts seems oddly intimidated by a role in which she is overtaken by a strong ensemble of classmates (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles), a powerfully dislikeable school administrator, and even the "house mother" at her instructor's dorm, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She seems at ease only in the film's lone romantic scene with her, as she lounges lazily in front of a fireplace with her long hair flowing down her face.
Kirsten Dunst as Betty Warren, spoiled and naive daughter of a Wellseley board member, is the antagonist, the lightning rod for convention and propriety, and wields a pen as her weapon against Watson's enlightened west-coast intrusions. We ultimately see her poison pen serve as foreshadowing of her own anger at the unraveling of her own presumably idyllic life in light of the uncapped potential of her peers. By film's end, she has clearly grown and changed more than Roberts.
The film ends with an attempt at a grand sendoff of the rebellious instructor in keeping with Dead Poets Society's on-the-desk "Captain my Captain", but the characters are not drawn with sufficient depth to make us sympathetic with the loss of their mentor, and the scene is only visually satisfying. If anything, we are more drawn to the strength of the relationships of the students to each other rather than the instructor. Where "Poets" drew Robin Williams character deep into the lives of his students, Watson's student relationship is manufactured at best, strained and intrusive at worst.
The film deserves unexpected credit for not casting itself as a unilateral message of contemporary feminism. It allows Watson, as the enlightened teacher, to offer her message of women's potential in non-traditional roles, yet also allows one of her students to assert the right to choose that traditional role without condescension.
It would be too harsh to cast the film as a failure. It is a decently written story, if too thin - always a risk with a story laden with numerous central characters, but often a masterpiece if done right, as in Dead Poets. "Smile" is wonderfully photographed in the picturesque northeast, and Roberts' supporting cast is arguably the very strength of the film. But for an actress who has made a career out of stealing scenes with a calculated glaze, wilting in the shadow of her co-stars is characterized as nothing but a below-par performance. "Smile" ends up being a "Dead Poets" for suffragettes, but just not done nearly as well.
And that's a shame.
Roberts seems oddly intimidated by a role in which she is overtaken by a strong ensemble of classmates (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Kirsten Dunst, and Julia Stiles), a powerfully dislikeable school administrator, and even the "house mother" at her instructor's dorm, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She seems at ease only in the film's lone romantic scene with her, as she lounges lazily in front of a fireplace with her long hair flowing down her face.
Kirsten Dunst as Betty Warren, spoiled and naive daughter of a Wellseley board member, is the antagonist, the lightning rod for convention and propriety, and wields a pen as her weapon against Watson's enlightened west-coast intrusions. We ultimately see her poison pen serve as foreshadowing of her own anger at the unraveling of her own presumably idyllic life in light of the uncapped potential of her peers. By film's end, she has clearly grown and changed more than Roberts.
The film ends with an attempt at a grand sendoff of the rebellious instructor in keeping with Dead Poets Society's on-the-desk "Captain my Captain", but the characters are not drawn with sufficient depth to make us sympathetic with the loss of their mentor, and the scene is only visually satisfying. If anything, we are more drawn to the strength of the relationships of the students to each other rather than the instructor. Where "Poets" drew Robin Williams character deep into the lives of his students, Watson's student relationship is manufactured at best, strained and intrusive at worst.
The film deserves unexpected credit for not casting itself as a unilateral message of contemporary feminism. It allows Watson, as the enlightened teacher, to offer her message of women's potential in non-traditional roles, yet also allows one of her students to assert the right to choose that traditional role without condescension.
It would be too harsh to cast the film as a failure. It is a decently written story, if too thin - always a risk with a story laden with numerous central characters, but often a masterpiece if done right, as in Dead Poets. "Smile" is wonderfully photographed in the picturesque northeast, and Roberts' supporting cast is arguably the very strength of the film. But for an actress who has made a career out of stealing scenes with a calculated glaze, wilting in the shadow of her co-stars is characterized as nothing but a below-par performance. "Smile" ends up being a "Dead Poets" for suffragettes, but just not done nearly as well.
And that's a shame.