Review of To Sir, with Love (1967) by Patrick B — 24 Jun 2010

To Sir, With Love is certainly an enjoyable teacher movie. Sidney Poitier is great as always, and the film shows that only a teacher who cares about their students can do anything for them. For its time, I could see this being a great film. But there have been plenty of other teacher movies since then, and I think that over the years, Hollywood has actually improved on the "teaching drama". What's missing from this oldie is the personal relationship with the students. Sure, Mr. Thackeray (Poitier) has a personal relationship with them, but we don't. We never see the students outside the classroom, and because of that, we're never able to see what they deal with day in and day out. These are supposed to be troubled kids, so lets see what's troubling them. The movie also relies a little too much on its title song to elevate our emotion, and in the final scene when one of the students (Lulu) sings the song at the end, it's kind of like, "We have to hear this song again?" Luckily, it's a good song, but director James Clavell relies on it too heavily.

Still, if you want to see an uplifting teacher movie, you can certainly do much worse than "To Sir, With Love". It's an enjoyable little film.