By Tricia Olszewski
Mona Lisa Smile, the much-hyped Julia Roberts vehicle about Wellesley in the '50s, has a cinematic twin: It might as well be subtitled Dead Artists Society. Instead of standing on their desks to quote "O Captain! My Captain!" the students of Mona Lisa Smile give their beloved teacher paint-by-numbers canvases of famous works of art. Of course, Wellesley girls don't give up their love easily—meaning that the shower of kitsch was well-earned: This particular educator, a first-year art-history professor, Made a Difference.
If it weren't for the film's swelling orchestral score, though, you might never notice. Roberts plays the heroine in question, California "bohemian" Katherine Watson, who's thrilled to be teaching at the prestigious New England women's college but is unsettled by what she finds when she gets there. From her rigidly proper roommate, Nancy (a hilarious Marcia Gay Harden), a "speech, elocution, and poise" professor, to her classroomful of parroting Lisa Simpsons who, regardless of their achievements, are more interested in marriage than careers, Katherine is surrounded by one dispiriting example after another. She angrily determines that she's employed by "a finishing school disguised as a college."
Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Maggie Gyllenhaal co-star as a trio of self-possessed students who question both Katherine's credentials and her lack of a wedding band. Each has a screaming character trait: Betty (Dunst) is bitchy, Joan (Stiles) doesn't really want to be a lawyer, and Giselle (Gyllenhaal) is "liberated" (aka a slut). Out of the three, only Gyllenhaal manages to make her character believable, mostly because she eschews Stiles' and Dunst's gratingly phony New England accents.
The story follows the bunch through the academic year, though the film comes to a dead stop midway for an extended sequence dedicated to Betty's wedding. Katherine's exasperation at school policies such as ignoring the absences of a recently betrothed student and firing the nurse for handing out birth control gets her labeled a "subversive"—which, along with the cool reception she gets from her students, leaves her continuing employment in question.
For a film that harps on the virtues of free thinking, Mona Lisa is pretty straitlaced, with Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal's script and Mike Newell's direction contriving conflict only to set up a predictably mawkish resolution. Worse, its supposedly transformative relationships seem founded on nothing: Katherine and a fellow professor (Dominic West) exchange spark-free small talk before suddenly cooing at each other before a fire; her students suddenly appreciate her tough love not because of any life-changing experiences but because, it seems, the movie's coming to an end.
Roberts has a few skillful moments in her largely unexciting role, mostly when she reminds us that she tends to approach her personification of America's sweetheart with a bite. (When showing slides of gender-defining ads, she charges: "A girdle to set you free—what does that mean?") The film's standout, however, is Harden, perfectly postured and dainty from her opening line of "Don't you just love chintz?" to her slurred come-on to a bartender at Betty's wedding.
Mona Lisa's wardrobe and soundtrack are also well-manicured, with tailored clothing, bright lipstick, and clip-on earrings mixing with songs such as "Santa Baby" and "I've Got a Crush on You" to convincingly evoke the era. But like Katherine's students, Mona Lisa only mimics: Underneath its good looks, it doesn't have an original idea in its pretty little head.