Review of Dead Poets Society (1989) by Tommy 'See The Treasure' S — 02 Dec 2013

Wow. Not many movies have succeeded in irritating me like this one. I'm not going to spend long on this review as frankly I'd rather forget the damn thing exists.

So you know the basic plot to this one even if you haven't seen it. Good kids, overbearing parents, hypocritical teachers, except for one ''inspirational'' English teacher named John Keating(Robin Williams). Keating's mission, he boasts to another teacher, is to help the kids to become ''freethinkers.'' He's the kind of teacher who conducts himself like some kind of rebel-against-conformity and simultaneously seems quite desperate for his students to like him.

Most of us have encountered an eccentric English teacher at some stage. I had a few funny English professors in college and some of them had similar airs of eccentricity to Mr Keating. But they also new what the hell they were talking about. They didn't recite to us trite platitudes on life, love and poetry, preach to us how we should ''seize the day,'' or act chummy with us in their off-campus hours. It takes quite an effort to take William's best qualities(namely his wild eccentricity and energy) and use them against him to create him an absolutely repugnant, cinematic parody of an English teacher, yet this movie succeeds in doing so. ''I'm helping them to become freethinkers'' he says. What a pretentious moron. But worse is how the movie purportedly embraces this ''freethinking'' and the rebellious spirit. Essentially all the students join a lame old club, recite poetry and congratulate each other on their rebelliousness. If one kid doesn't wish to conform to this stupid charade they are basically harassed into doing so against their will. Freethinkers indeed!

The movie seems to undermine its own hackneyed message at every given opportunity. Not once do any of the kids challenge Keating's philosophies, and Keating never encourages them to. Why would they? Why risk adding any complexity or depth to such neatly simplistic messages? Let me just finish by saying this: I'm sure educators can sometimes be inspirational, but no one ever learned how to be a ''freethinker'' from a teacher and, more significantly, no one ever learned how to be a ''freethinker'' from some movie, especially not one as posturing, manipulative and stupid as this one.