Mona Lisa Smile Review

"Mona Lisa Smile" reviews

Movie

Mona Lisa Smile

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2006-09-18 21:37:25

Rating

1.5/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

Mona Lisa Smile's estrogen-spiked 1953 rip-off of Dead Poet's Society is about as inspirational as paint-by-numbers artwork, but it doesn't even supply the nostalgic kitsch of the faddish craft.

Story

Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), a novice professor from UCLA, lands a job in the art history department at Wellesley College in the fall of 1953, and she's thrilled at the prospect of educating some of the brightest young women in the country. But her lofty image of Wellesley quickly fizzles when she discovers that despite its academic reputation, the school fosters an environment where success is measured by the size of a girl's engagement ring. Besides learning about fresco techniques and physics, the women take classes in the art of serving tea to their husband's bosses, something that doesn't sit well with the forward-thinking Katherine, who openly encourages her students to strive for goals other than marriage. Katherine inspires a group of students, specifically Joan (Julia Stiles) and Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal), but newlywed Betty (Kirsten Dunst) feels Katherine looks down on her for choosing a husband over a career. Betty goes on the offensive and uses her column in the school paper to drive a wedge between the professor and the stuffy faculty. But while Betty puts on a happily married face, her hostility towards Katherine is actually misplaced anger stemming from her miserable marriage to a cheating charlatan.

Acting

Katherine is Mona Lisa Smile's most complex and intriguing character, and Roberts is a fitting choice for the part. Like an old soul, the actress has a depth that's perfect for a character like Katherine, who's enlightened and ahead of her time. But Katherine never emotionally connects with any of her students, which isn't surprising since they're so bitchy and self-absorbed. Perhaps more time should have been spent developing the young women's characters and building their relationships with Katherine sooner, but as it is the underdeveloped friendships between the women will leave viewers feeling indifferent rather than inspired. The worst of the bunch is Dunst's character Betty, who is intent on making everyone around her feel unworthy. She has her reasons, of course, but they're revealed so late in the story that it's hard to suddenly empathize with her after having spent three-quarters of the film hating her guts. Stiles' character Joan is perhaps the most congenial but, like Betty, she never develops a strong bond with her teacher. The most ''liberal'' of the girls is Giselle, played by Gyllenhaal, but the character suffers the same burden as the rest: She's unlikable. Giselle's penchant for sleeping with professors and married men is so odious that not even her 11th hour broken-home story can salvage her character.

Direction

While Mona Lisa's smile in Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting has often been described as subtle, director Mike Newell's star-studded drama is anything but that; Mona Lisa Smile is so heavy-handed that, unlike the painting for which it was named, there is nothing left for moviegoers to ponder or debate. The film plays like a montage of '50s ideological iconography: A school nurse gets fired for dispensing birth control; a teacher refers to Lucille Ball as a ''communist''; Betty's prayers are answered when she gets what every woman dreams of--a washer and dryer. But the film's critical insight into '50s culture isn't as shocking as it thinks it is, and the way it highlights feminist issues is as uninspired as trivial as a fine-art reproduction. Newell also spends too much time basking in the aura of the '50s era, focusing on countless parties, dances and weddings sequences that, while visually ambitious, are superfluous. The film may be historically accurate, but its characters, story and message will leave moviegoers feeling empty. A climactic scene, for example, in which Katherine's students ride their bikes alongside her car as a show of support comes across as a tool to evoke sentiment that just doesn't exist.

Bottom Line

Mona Lisa Smile's lesson of the day--that the '50s were an oppressive decade for women--is delivered in an unoriginal manner through such shallow and unlikable characters that its message lacks an emotional punch.

Copyright © CinemaSource 2006.

Movie

MONA LISA SMILE

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-27 22:16:48

Provider

MRIB

Review

While few doubted the superlative performance from Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven, more raised concerns that her '50s housewife could be so downtrodden and committed to her husband. She was always dutiful despite the fact that their marriage was little more than a farce. Well this melodrama from Four Wedding director Mike Newell illustrates just where women such as Cathy Whitaker were groomed.

Set during the 1953 / 54 academic year, Mona Lisa Smile is set at the prestigious Wellesley College where the future wives of corporate businessmen are given lessons such riveting subjects as table setting, deportment and grooming and are told that, in a few years, their "sole responsibility will be taking care of your husband and children." New arts history teacher though Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) wants to show her young charges that there is much more to life that this but soon finds herself facing accusations of subversion.

Despite some accomplished performances, this project fails to reach the heady heights of the movie it will no doubt be compared too, Dead Poets Society, mainly thanks to a rather uninspired script.

Sure Newell makes sure the movie gets it's point across - that women in the '50s were on the verge of taking on more involved roles with many unhappy at the thought of simply playing second fiddle to their spouses - but it does so without any great force or pathos. It almost feels like the film is on autopilot.

The cast are uniformly good with Roberts taking the lead and young stars Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Julia Stiles following with gusto but any power or momentum the project may have gathered dissipates towards the end thanks to the habitual 'happy' ending which feels a bit cheap and tacked on which is a shame because, while Mona Lisa Smile could have been a strong statement about female empowerment, it ends up more like a soppy TV movie.

Copyright © MRIB 2005.