Tedfoldol
everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Iseerphia
All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.
Bessie Smyth
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
david-sarkies
This movie receives an awful lot of praise and I find that I quite enjoy it as well. It chronicles the life of a music teacher at John F. Kennedy Highschool (arriving after the name was changed from Ulysses Grant Highschool). He came into the school reluctantly because he wanted some time to compose some music but ended getting caught up within the school.Mr Holland's Opus is a movie about shattered dreams and about how what we look to do is not what we end up doing. Holland's dream is to write a symphony but he finds that he is doing too much to get any time to actually dedicate to it. He becomes a teacher and almost immediately after he has a child forcing him to buy a house. To pay off the house he decides to take up summer work which drains even more of his time. Each of these things are unplanned and he finds himself caught up in the affairs of the school for thirty years.He is overjoyed at having a child and dreams of raising this child as a great musician, but once again his dream is shattered when he learns that the child is deaf. As such he begins to isolate himself from his son and embrace his students. He feels that he can not relate to his son because he believes that he cannot appreciate that which he loves. This causes dissension between Holland and his son because of this.Mr Holland's Opus tries to create a real person with dreams, desires, and heartaches and it is a movie about how he confronts these heartaches. Though he finds that he cannot write his own music, he is drawn further into the school wanting to work with the students there. Another shattered dream comes when the jock who he teaches to play the drum is killed in Vietnam. He saw a lot of potential for the boy, especially how he struggled with his incapability to learn only to be killed in a war that nobody wanted. This is contrasted at the time with another student who is so intelligent that he ends up wasting Holland's time. Holland drags him along to a funeral to point out to him a real student who struggled to learn only to have his life struck away from him.In the end Holland feels that he has gained nothing. He is dumped in a budget cut and even though he fought, there was nothing he could do. He walks out of the school thinking that he had done nothing only to walk into the auditorium to be confronted by all of the people that had been through his classes in thirty years and what they had become. It is interesting to see the first girl he worked with, the one who struggled with the oboe walk up as governor of the state. Holland believed that he was a failure but when he looked upon all of the people who he had influenced it struck him that he was not going to be forgotten.This movie shows us that even though we may not have made a huge impact on the world nor have got where we have wanted to, all we need to do is look around at the people we have interacted with to realise that we have made an impact in our own way. Even though we may not have risen to the heights, our close friends will remember us and what we have done for them.
SnoopyStyle
Mr Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) is a frustrated musician and composer. He is frustrated at his teaching job. It was supposed to be temporary to pay the bills. But the years pass, his life passes, and he feels he has achieved nothing. But what he discovers is that his life has meaning for all those he has touched over years.This is definitely one of those feel good movies. The individual stories are memorable. The feeling of lost palpable. The moment when he finally connects with his deaf child. That was powerful. All the stories are poignant. Richard Dreyfuss is perfectly suited as the old disillusioned teacher. It's a good cry movie all the way.
remaxmiracle
Mr. Holland's Opus is a lovely and engaging film about a musician and composer forced by life to get a 'real job'. The movie skillfully takes place over many decades and is tied together by the music of each generation. Filled with all the emotions and decisions we each must deal with every day, Mr. Holland's Opus explores what it means to have your dreams conflict with your reality with results ranging from frustration to melancholy to joy. Heartfelt without pandering or being overly sappy I think this will appeal to watchers of all ages, especially those who had someone in their life who left an everlasting trace.
dunmore_ego
A well-intentioned redemption movie that follows all its formulas sweetly, then tries one last tear-jerk that just makes us feel dirty, paying off with a nice piece of elevator muzak that is so memorable, it will have you humming something else within five minutes of hearing it.Richard Dreyfus is Mr. Holland, a composer who begrudgingly takes a job as a high school music teacher to make ends meet. His methods are rigid at first, as he forgets that music is meant to be fun. Then he remembers. Then his students forget. And so on.There's the faithful, supportive wife (Glenne Headly), the brash football coach buddy (Bill Meister), the anal principal who butts heads with Holland over his "revolutionary" teaching methods, like teaching rock and roll and other devil's music (William H. Macy), the wet-mouthed schoolgirl with the crush (Jean Louisa Kelly, who sexes Holland with a sensual rendition of "Someone to Watch Over Me"), the black underprivileged kid with no rhythm-- hang on now!-- The wha-? Terrence Howard pretends really badly that whitey Dreyfus teaches him soul... and finally, for this man whose life revolves around hearing - his wife births a deaf son. Writer Patrick Sheane Duncan shows us the Poignant Plot Device Handbook is a harsh mistress.Throughout his career of coaxing musicality from his students and sending out into the world, Holland slaves over a masterpiece that we only hear in snatches as he toodles on his piano and scribbles notes.Then the big payoff. Holland, old, exhausted, forced into retirement, is given a final surprise by his students, as they assemble in the auditorium as an orchestra to perform his magnum opus for the first time. And after 30 years of working on this piece of music which he brazenly calls "American Symphony"; after all that sweat and sacrifice and slaving, his magnum opus sounds like - elevator muzak! In 12/8 time, a tuneless, embarrassing, meandering piece of unmemorable laundry detergent commercial. And look at the faces on the crowd: inspired, majestic, flavor bursting in your mouth not in your hand.MR. HOLLAND'S OPUS is a cry for art, a plea for creativity, a pledge against mediocrity - and The "American Symphony" is the turd in the swimming pool of musical appreciation.It is blathered quite overtly that Mr. Holland's true opus is the collective education of his students over the years. THEY are his masterpiece... Thank Christ! For a moment, we thought we'd have to continue to hold our "inspired" faces for your laundry detergent commercial...
