Another movie based on a real story. Usually a teacher joins a class and makes them smart by caring a lot. Often an outsider teacher who initially rather be anywhere else, but brings new ideas to the classroom and does things differently. It's not really how real life works, but these movies are feel good and fun as they are about a single goal and with happy endings. They are always easy to watch, but never quite bring anything new to the table. Here it's a principal instead of a teacher so we see how he changes the whole school.
The movie is not bad. Morgan Freeman is just amazing. The other adult actors are great too. Jokes fly fast and the humor works because the scenes feel real as they actually talk about small events that happened. If someone does something small other people mention it. It feels like a real school. At least this is the case for the first hour. By then we understand who everyone is and the plans and scenes don't change. It's more and more of the same plot. These type of movies are very predictable. Unless you try to expand the plot, have amazing acting all the way, or present some great details it becomes a movie where one can just guess all scenes. We all know how the movie will end. So it feels 30 minutes too long unfortunately. The plot is so common that the new stuff this movie delivers only holds it up for an hour.
There is a lot of shouting! Initially it was cool to see the principal screwing up. He was shouting at teachers and never thanking them. The teachers who shouted back got fired. The quiet teachers just took it and cried. It was nice to see that he wasn't some superhero and that teachers asked for respect. Hell, in real life he got fired because a strip show took place at the school and later got into trouble in his new job. He's clearly not a guy who can stick around for long as he is bound to screw up really badly at some point. Which they also talk about. The issue is that they mostly started with regular scenes with great acting then went into these shouting matches. One in a full movie could work. But here they use this again and again. Just 6 or so shouting matches. Then a ton of really loud songs. A ton of shouting. The movie becomes irritating. Instead of slowing down and delivering a plot is tried to be as loud as possible.
Of course since the school magically becomes great and students suddenly all pass their main test he's a hero here no matter what he did. They could show him beat up students for an hour then show their improved scores and I'd still consider it an impressive job. How did he really do this? Is it possible to make stupid people smart? Nope. So what happened? Well, they show it at the very start. He expelled the worst students and things sorted themselves out. Before that we also see how the school was a high quality school with mainly White kids until it turned into a ghetto school for largely Black and Hispanic students with early pregnancies, drug sales, fights, gangs. Of course he fixes that right away somehow. It's never quite clear what this magic is or how he uses it. It's just a tame feel good movie that doesn't really explain itself. The race issues they mention is interesting and deep stuff. But they never dig into it. Rather it becomes a song fest and shouting match. The humor also fades away. It doesn't really hold up in all scenes even though there is a ton of fun scenes here too. It's like a mix of a good movie and then silly predictable scenes.
The movie is not bad. Morgan Freeman is just amazing. The other adult actors are great too. Jokes fly fast and the humor works because the scenes feel real as they actually talk about small events that happened. If someone does something small other people mention it. It feels like a real school. At least this is the case for the first hour. By then we understand who everyone is and the plans and scenes don't change. It's more and more of the same plot. These type of movies are very predictable. Unless you try to expand the plot, have amazing acting all the way, or present some great details it becomes a movie where one can just guess all scenes. We all know how the movie will end. So it feels 30 minutes too long unfortunately. The plot is so common that the new stuff this movie delivers only holds it up for an hour.
There is a lot of shouting! Initially it was cool to see the principal screwing up. He was shouting at teachers and never thanking them. The teachers who shouted back got fired. The quiet teachers just took it and cried. It was nice to see that he wasn't some superhero and that teachers asked for respect. Hell, in real life he got fired because a strip show took place at the school and later got into trouble in his new job. He's clearly not a guy who can stick around for long as he is bound to screw up really badly at some point. Which they also talk about. The issue is that they mostly started with regular scenes with great acting then went into these shouting matches. One in a full movie could work. But here they use this again and again. Just 6 or so shouting matches. Then a ton of really loud songs. A ton of shouting. The movie becomes irritating. Instead of slowing down and delivering a plot is tried to be as loud as possible.
Of course since the school magically becomes great and students suddenly all pass their main test he's a hero here no matter what he did. They could show him beat up students for an hour then show their improved scores and I'd still consider it an impressive job. How did he really do this? Is it possible to make stupid people smart? Nope. So what happened? Well, they show it at the very start. He expelled the worst students and things sorted themselves out. Before that we also see how the school was a high quality school with mainly White kids until it turned into a ghetto school for largely Black and Hispanic students with early pregnancies, drug sales, fights, gangs. Of course he fixes that right away somehow. It's never quite clear what this magic is or how he uses it. It's just a tame feel good movie that doesn't really explain itself. The race issues they mention is interesting and deep stuff. But they never dig into it. Rather it becomes a song fest and shouting match. The humor also fades away. It doesn't really hold up in all scenes even though there is a ton of fun scenes here too. It's like a mix of a good movie and then silly predictable scenes.