Resolved: This movie belongs on television as a Movie of the Week. The critics who call this a great movie are either on drugs or are having fond memories of being on their high school debate team. I don't know what exactly is so exceptional, other than the fact that the picture has two critically lauded actors, one of which for whom the praise is justified (Forest Whitaker).
This may be controversial, but I have been thinking for a while that Denzel Washington is overrated. He is a very good actor, yes, but a great one? He certainly gave at least one great performance, as Malcolm X, but Washington takes too many easy roles in similar films. He needs to stay away from thrillers and never play a cop, soldier or FBI agent again.
To his credit, his character does not hold any of those occupations in this movie. He plays a college professor named Melvin Tolson who is also the coach of his schools debate team. Tolson is mysterious, holding leftist views (some call him a Communist, but this is never substantiated), he is hated by the white establishment in his Texas town, while attempting to bring blacks and whites together to form a labor union. His training methods are unorthodox (we get the obligatory Dead Poet Society moment when he gets his students to do something seemingly pointless that raises character), but his team becomes undefeated and is eventually challenged by a white college, whom they beat. This is gives them a historical opportunity to play Harvard (in real life, the team played Oxford in England). Do you think these underdogs could possibly the greatest debate team on the planet.
For most of the way, this movie is Rocky with debating instead of boxing. The only times the movie comes alive is when it shows us the paranoid environment that blacks had deal with in Southern society everyday. The movie's best scene revolves around the college's President (Whitaker) having to humiliate himself in front of his family in order to avoid being killed. This is what the movie should be about- how people like Tolson were able to endure such oppression and find the bravery to fight back against it, not whether someone wins a debate trophy.
This movie is forgettable. I barely even remember it. I have no idea why critics are calling this a magical, Capra-esq experience. It gets three stars because I can't say it's a bad film, as it does what it sets out to do without being boring, but a lot more was promised than I received.
The Great Debaters (2008)