Plantiana Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Huievest Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

gwnightscream Morgan Freeman, Beverly Todd, Lynne Thigpen and Robert Guillaume star in John Avildsen's 1989 drama based on a true story. This takes place in New Jersey and Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption) plays Joe Clark, a former teacher turned principal who is asked to clean up inner-city high school, Eastside after 20 years that's become drug-infested and lacks education. He gets off to a rough start with his strict methods, but eventually turns things around and gains loyalty and respect of his students and staff. Todd plays Miss Levias, his assistant, the late, Thigpen plays Mrs. Barrett, a parent who dislikes him and Guillaume (Benson) plays Frank Napier, the school superintendent. Freeman is great in this as usual and I think it's one of his best films. I recommend this good 80's drama.

secondtake Lean on Me (1989)A rousing movie about possibility and overcoming obstacles. It's an uncomplicated movie, telling in a linear way about the six month hard core reform of a very troubled inner-city high school. But it will make you feel good if you have any sentiment in you.Morgan Freeman is the newly installed principal with an idiosyncratic zeal that is perfect for this rough and tumble school. He tactics are severe—and seemingly heartless— kicking out hundreds of kids and punishing countless others for seemingly small offenses. But he certainly takes charge, and that was foremost. The students respond. Test scores improve.One of the messages here is still pertinent, and he puts it well to the whole group. If you are failing, it's not the fault of your parents, or the white folks. It's your fault. And so personal accountability is step one, then and now. The teachers seem mostly on target, though they get some abuse from his as well. (The chorus teacher in particular seems brilliant, but since she is teaching Mozart instead of the school song she is on the wrong side.) And so it goes, piece by piece, person by person.I say uncomplicated, but simplistic might be another word. This kind of reform must have been even more complex and stressful and painful than the movie shows—this isn't a documentary one bit. In fact, this is more of a fable, a kind of message driven tale of a man with a mission who overcomes the odds. That it's rooted in fact is only a small tweak to the larger point.

The_Film_Cricket There is an awful lot of yelling in 'Lean On Me' and maybe the filmmakers think that it is justified because it is based on a true story. The problem is that the main character, 'Crazy Joe' Clark is so loud, abrasive and obnoxious that it is hard to get an emotional foothold on what he is trying to accomplish. That's a problem when the movie is trying to siphon that hateful character into an inspirational teacher movie.The movie stars Morgan Freeman as Clark a loud-mouthed, bull horn-toting educator who is brought back to the once proud Eastside High School to clean it up and get the students through the state exam. The opening scenes show the school hallways as a place where drug-dealing, violence and vandalism are a way of life. Showing that the school is out of control is one thing but the corridors of this school look two bricks shy of a prison riot.Clark is brought out of a comfortable job as an elementary school teacher to whip Eastside into shape but for every action that he tries to accomplish there is another action that leaves us shaking our heads. It's one thing to expel 300 trouble-makers and demand that the graffiti be brought down but it's quite another to force students to sing the school song on demand and fire the English teacher because he moved during it's singing.I have no objection to a hard driving educator but I take issue with Clark who refuses to hear anyone's opinion and berates anyone who makes an opposing suggestion. The movie never makes any attempts to allow him to learn from his mistake, he is simply seen as a very trouble, bullying man who gets results but refuses to acknowledge those that he steps on to get his way.The ending of the movie isn't really dealt with in a serious way. Clark chains the emergency doors to keep drug dealers out which of course is illegal. One parent with a grudge insists that Clark be arrested and when he goes to jail, we get one of those tired old scenes where every single student marches up to the courthouse to demand his release.From the sides, the movie throws in a lot of one-dimensional characters. There is a portly teacher who functions as a whipping post for Clark's tirades. There is an arrogant music teacher who only figures into the story so that Clark can fire her for insubordination. Then there is an angry parent who wants Clark fired and whose only scenes involve her making demands.'Lean On Me' is a movie torn between two ideas. Director John G. Avildson wants to create a biography of what Clark did to Eastside but he also wants to make an inspirational teacher movie. The mechanics of both don't quite fit together because the script refuses to allow Clark to learn anything himself.

Gabriel Teixeira Based on the true story of Joe Clark, 'Lean on Me' features Morgan Freeman as the controversial teacher tasked with recovering Eastside High, a decaying school that has become a den of violence, drug abuse and all-around despair. While inspirational teacher dramas are nothing new ('To Sir, with Love' comes right to mind, as well as that same year's 'Dead Poets Society'), 'Lean on Me' is uncommon in how the teacher is depicted. True to the real-life Joe Clark, Freeman portrays a tough, quasi- tyrannical teacher that is not afraid of taking extreme measures to keep (or instate) the discipline in the school. There is no idealistic, fantasy-esque 'talk settles everything' development here; Clark is brutally realistic in his views of the school's problems and is not afraid of answering in the same way rather than smooth-talking and merely 'putting his faith on the goodness of the delinquents'.Another good anti-cliché is that the other teachers are not exempt from this. Most school dramas seem to base themselves on the premise that 'everyone is a genius, they just need to be listened to'; in other words, if you teach discipline to the students or give them support them they will automatically ace all tests/recover their grades as if on a miracle. 'Lean on Me' shows that bettering the behavior is a step on the right direction, but is not everything; Clark demands from the professors the same hard-work, dedication and discipline he does from the students.After all, how can you help them if you don't lead by example?This screenplay is not perfect though: the ending seems to flirt with the idealistic feel of other school dramas, and there seems to be plot contrivances. The supporting characters are mostly underdeveloped, and small subplots brought up here and there are either barely touched upon or made irrelevant in light of the focus on Clark's story. It doesn't help, or maybe it does, that Morgan Freeman gives one of his best performances and outshines everyone and everything in here, making these subplots easy to forget.All in all, a remarkable drama with one of the best Morgan Freeman performances I've ever seem. A great watch, and a refreshment for the 'teacher drama subgenre'. Now, if only more real teachers would not be afraid to act out like him...