Review of The History Boys (2006) by Vladd. — 10 Jan 2008

This film was abysmal. It does not establish any sort of emotional connection between the viewer and any of the characters. The end should have made more of an impact, but instead, I remained completely apathetic throughout.

The film, though it tries hard, is nothing but a string of loosely connected, or often, completely unrelated events (and extremely long, wordy, irrelevant quotations) culminating in an uneventful, predictable and overall boring conclusion.

A scene that stands out in my mind as particularly terrible is when Dakin approaches Irwin, his teacher, about his desire for Irwin to "suck him off" at a future date, to which Irwin cancels his prior engagements and consents.

This scene did nothing other than suggesting that every single character in this film is homosexual. To what end? Are we discussing the acceptance of homosexuals into society, or exploring the gradual process of a man examining himself and realizing he is homosexual, or even observing a budding "forbidden" relationship between student and teacher? No.

This scene is entirely irrelevant, comes completely out of left field and has no bearing on any of the other events of the story. This 109 minute movie felt like four hours of the same four dull scenes looping over and over and over.

Don't bother picking this up.