I have to admit I find Julia Roberts somewhat tiring to watch on any screen these days. Perhaps she just hasn't aged well. I don't think that's the issue though. Regardless of my physical attractions to her she is still quite an excellent actress. The most recent movie I watched with her in it was titled "Mona Lisa Smile". Amusingly enough there is a song with that title, and no small amount of discussion concerning Mona Lisa's smile. Needless to say I was less than shocked by such obvious attempts to "create a central theme". Something that is apparently important in all forms of media. At this point I have to ask whether what I'm writing has a central theme, and my first notion is that the theme centers around this movie I watched mostly because I was bored. Boredom can be a great motivator to watch something that I normally would not endure, and I find that I learn from such experiences. Usually I learn that such films are actually much more than a "sappy romance", which sadly is what some individuals would call this particular film. Perhaps by dumbing it down they think it will be more bearable, but really what I want is a movie that makes me think, and that challenges my own views on any subject. Belief being what it is, it is good to come across media that challenges my beliefs rather than simply affirming them.
The movie is about a woman who moves to some cold town, Chicago area I think. The real location is Wellesley College. It's a woman's college that was basically where Harvard and Yale boys went to find wives. At least that was how the movie portrayed it. At what point Julia's character is ranting about how the place isn't really a college, but "a finishing school". Now I'll be honest that I really don't know much about finishing schools, but the context of the statement led me to believe that they were places where young ladies learned how to be "good wives". I chuckled at most of this, but somewhere deep down inside I feel that such practices aren't necessarily helpful. Don't get me wrong. I think that if a person wants to learn elocution, ironing, cooking, cleaning, and all of the other pertininent homemaking arts that he/she should be able learn from the best. However, disguising such as a liberal arts education is, in my humble opinion, marginally immoral. Regardless the film plodded along, as all films do.
There were a variety of characters who actually had some amount of depth. It didn't hurt that many of them were fairly attractive individuals. I wouldn't say that I loved any one of them in particular. I also wouldn't say that I felt this film even remotely rivaled that of "Dead Poet's Society". Perhaps being a man had something to do with that. It did have its own charm, and appeal. Mostly I enjoyed how Robert's character challenged the young ladies of Wellesley to "think outside the box". Really she was challenging the very fabric of their worldviews, eww that word. In doing so her character reminded me of the importance of challenging my own perspectives on reality. What is art? Who decides? These parts of the movie were, for me, the most poignant.
Since I don't like to use quantitative point systems to measure unquantifiable qualities in art I will simply suggest that this film has good merits, and perhaps some poor ones as well. I'll leave it to you to decide which is which, and if, or perhaps when, we disagree, we'll both agree that there were in fact such within the film despite our inability to agree on which are which. I hope you didn't understand that.