User reviews

This earnest, highly drab retread into the teacher-overcomes-odds-in-a-tough-school routine is hard to criticize for the unabashedly inspirational slant the writers try to ingrain on their audience, yet is harder to recommend to any cinephiles over the age of twenty due to it's heavy-handed derivative nature. Nothing at all is even attempted to be reworked for this updated, and far less gripping piece of educational uplifting, akin to quintessential ghetto-teacher film Stand and Deliver, and youth appealing Dangerous Minds. Freedom Writers tries to take what made those movies appealing, relevant, and inspiring, and instead synthesizes a two hour after school special with a dash of grit thrown in to mark the studio release.

Immediately, the highly clichéd script bombards viewers with some kind of calculatedly cool quotient in capturing a young crowd of inner city students during the mid 90's, becoming a stressful and somewhat embarrassing attempt at staying "street" in order to appeal to the young demographic it is catering to, though mainly coming across as a stereotypically soulless ensemble cast, donning a naive and ill-advised screenwriter's sheltered reality. The more these students open up to their teacher about the struggles they face each and every day in the hood, the less you embrace the manipulative and ignorant material coming out of their mouths. Writer Richard LaGravenese definitely knows how to write decent dialog and cover certain groups of society (white yuppies) as his earlier work has continually shown, but it seems being chosen to adapt a script based off of the real life classroom battles waged in legendary room 203 was to forsake any latent authenticity present in this true story.

Though the film may indulge in every genre cliché it is afforded too heavily to engage the weary viewer, the movie is not a complete loss. The overall theme remains triumphantly warm to the heart, augmented by the story's true origins and the presence of Hillary Swank. The young and talented actress has a strange habit of making a few Oscar winning films and following through with relatively dead-end projects (something I find strangely appealing in an ego-less sort of way), this definitely falling into the latter category at this point in her career, though her presence alone certainly makes the film more bearable. The under-examined, passionate discourse that flows through her classroom when angry students begin to open their hearts and minds to greater possibilities, cuts through much of the predictably melodramatic dialog that pervades this movie to offer a few genuinely heartfelt moments of tense commentary, though the equation the film offers that gets the students to that point remains questionable. It's heart may be in the right place, but it's vision remains stuck latching onto former, and better, work on this topic.

Freedom Writers did not strike me as the humbling, harrowing, emotionally charged piece that it seems to have done so many others. It struck me as an odd reworking of 1990's Kindergarten Cop played more for grimaces than laughs this time round, rather distastefully using The Holocaust as an overlying umbrella under which to fabricate feeling; soul and heart. The film is supposedly based on a true story, but for a film to have been done so, Freedom Writers certainly feels false; hockey and generic at every which way. The film flicks between narration from the school kids within the text to the teacher teaching them; it covers the life of the kids living how they live to the marital problems that come about from dedication to the class and it does all this whilst using Anne Frank's diary as an item to fast-track an aura of heart in order to force us to feel for all these people. We ought not be fooled. The true story of a group of mismatched kids coming to terms with life; education and equality is quite humbling, but not when it's squeezed out through the syrupy filter of the TV movie of the week aesthetic; The Holocaust is obviously one of the darkest hours in mankind's history, but don't use it in a text that's about anything but said event. All of it culminates in a meek, disturbingly uninvolved drama.

The lead of the film is a certain Erin Gruwell (Swank), a toothy; perky; smiley lead whose beaming face and broad smile instills a stark sense of kindness and likability into the audience, this after a brief opening from the perspective of young Hispanic-American girl Eva (Hernández) whose past-tragedy, she informs us, is an awareness of racism in her father being arrested for what she describes as a 'rasict arrest' and a hatred of the rest of a world in general as a result of this. What follows is a degree of pleasure derived from an initiation into gang life and the consequent living of that life. She's in the class, along with other hoodlums; misfits and petty criminals of Hispanic; African-American and Hmong descent, that Erin's about to take over. Being a 1st time teacher and jumping head first into the deep end, other teachers have their doubts; one student gives her a week before she cracks. Roll up your sleeves, because the job is on.

I preferred the formula when it was applied to 2005 French film The Chorus; a film set in post-Second World War France at a boarding house for boys. The lead in that case was a kind elderly gentleman, whom was far less annoying than Swank's Erin Gruwell, and used classical music plus the formation of a choir as a means of controlling them more-so persistent hark backs to the Death Camps of central Europe of around the 1930s and 40s. The Chorus was damp, bleak and dishevelled in its cinematography; the class subjects younger and therefore more prone to dafter and more dangerous things in a more off the cuff manner. The film was more interested in how the lead's teaching had an effect on the pupils' later lives, and the soundtrack consisted of quaint, calming music that were representable of the teacher's methods in bringing around the boys. This was music they did not know existed, and their respective arcs which spanned their entire lives, would eventually bring them around to feel emotions they were yet to realise existed. Freedom Writers thinks it's effective to have the latest and lamest in Hip-Hop from groups that name themselves things like: "will.i.am" and "RZA" acting as the soundtrack to the transformation; the camera gently tracking in one on occasion to a beaming Swank whilst the name 'Anne Frank' lingers oddly in the background on a chalkboard in what is an absurd moment among many.

The class room sequences are punctuated by a series of meetings Erin has with her father Steve (Glenn); their interactions shot mostly in profile as they sit at tables to accentuate conflicting ideas: "You're teaching people who don't give a damn about education" so he says. The majority of the teachers at the school are white, or of Caucasian descent so there is that sense of 'senseible' whites teaching a bunch of multi-cultured delinquents, but there you go. Director/co-writer Richard LaGravenese does his best to try and inject some sort of level of study into proceedings; sequences such as the scenes shot in duality as two girls of similar ages, but of different ethnicities, dress up for a night out in the exact same fashion suggesting there is a link between the two. On another occasion, Erin separates the class by way of a physical shifting of people beyond a line drawn in the middle of the room so that everyone is eventually made to believe they have so much more in common with each other than first presumed.

Due to the low intelligence of the class, the film has Erin consistently spelling-out-everything-that-she-means-in-her-speech so as they understand, enabling the film to keep it nice and simple for the watching audience so as they may come to observe the simplistic sensitivity the makers think they've got going on here – it's ultimately pitifully undramatic. Freedom Writers is paced ploddingly at the best of times and is by the numbers throughout; crass in its assumption we would find any of the content involving and daft in its use of the Holocaust and Anne Frank's diary to try and further the emotional depth that it thinks it has. Tacky, underwhelming and nowhere near as complicated as it thinks it is; Freedom Writers is a mess.

I thought this film was very over dramatized. It thinks its a lot more profound than it actually is.

I do not live in America but i struggle to believe that this is what it is like in even 10% of the schools there. The characters are unbelievable and ultimately unlikeable. I wasn't expecting very much going into the film and i got out exactly what i thought i would. An alright performance from Swank, a couple of kids who really annoyed the hell out of me, especially the lead female teenager, who doesn't know who Anne Frank is? Ridiculous.

The only recommendable scene in this film was when they had the holocaust survivor come into the school as it was truly a touching moment. I don't know if she was a real Holocaust survivor but I'd be more impressed if she wasn't as it was powerful acting.

But that aside, this is a poor film.

I decided to go and watch the movie on a Sunday evening because i saw it had a high grade on IMDb. A 7,4 that should be something! Of course i already saw some earlier teacher goes to bad school movies before. I must say, some are better than this.

Its a big pile of clichés. At first the kids don't listen. She puts in effort, even though here boss and family are against this. Blabla she does inspires these children because she does put in effort. The children aren't gang bangers, no they are victims. So why does it has such a high grade? I think maybe because of the acting. Hillary swank is a good actor, as are some of the kids.

Overall the mocie didn't do anything i haven't seen before. very weak script. Good music tough. So 5 stars out of 10.

First of all, excuse me for my English.

I will try to be brief. The movie raises certain themes like murder, drugs, gangs, racism and a long etcetera, and tries to persuade us that the education is the solution to those problems, especially historical education.

I think that this interpretation demerits and covers up other more important factors than the film itself states but which it soon forgets, such as the economic context of the characters, or even the power that other individuals exercise over the life of the protagonists, these just to mention a few.

In conclusion, the film is everything that can be expected of its genre (without spectacular shots, even without a masterful edition), however they are things that could be forgiven, but the message is too simplistic and worse, it gives an incomplete idea of how is to live and get out of a gang.

... but it's not quite worth the entire 120 minute investment. It's a ever-familiar story: societally disadvantaged kids get an inspirational teacher who helps them do better in school/life. The fact that it's based on a true story is great, but a half-hour documentary might have been more worthwhile.

The main problem with the movie is the generally predictable plot and shallow characters. Regarding the latter, the characters were not interesting because they were all one-dimensional: racist (school administrators), unilaterally moral (Swank's character) or untrusting but then blossoming (the students).

Sometimes a movie can get away with this, but only if there's some other redeeming aspect about the movie. In this case, the story doesn't get semi-interesting until the last 30 or 40 minutes when it begins to differentiate itself from other similar movies.

Overall, I'd have to say it's not worth spending the time watching it. Instead, read about the real-life story online: freedomwritersfoundation.org