Dead Poets Society (1989)

Excellent but underrated film

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

My motto is : in order to be a good teacher , tell your students to do one only thing shut up and study , study and shut up If someone wastes his time trying to convince people his ideas work whereas the ideas of the other teachers don't, that man/woman is not a teacher He's a dictator I've always hated late robin Williams anyway

Oh Captain, my Captain! That was a Wonderful movie. I think i'm going to watch it again.

English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) has a rather unorthodox approach to teaching (which raises a few eyebrows in the early stages). Worse is to follow when a group of students find Keating's book and learn about his involvement in The Dead Poets Society (essentially Keating and his fellow students going against the grain). When Keating divulges what The Dead Poets Society is all about the students are intrigued and decide to form their own Dead Poets Society, but will all of this come at a cost?I hadn't seen Dead Poets Society before but wanted to give it a chance due to its high rating and because it starred Robin Williams (an actor who can be brilliant when given the right material). What really surprised me about this film is how empty and boring it felt to me for the majority of its running time.I think the major problem I had with this film is that there was nothing really driving the narrative forward; if you look at films like To Sir With Love and Dangerous Minds they focus on students who are initially rebellious and end up being won over by a teacher and their unorthodox teaching methods which means that there is something there to move the story along i.e character shifts and character progression. In Dead Poets Society you don't really get any of that; the kids here seem far too accepting of Keating and his quirky and unorthodox teaching methods which doesn't give the film much of a sense of realism and doesn't make a lot of the classroom scenes all that involving.Even coming away from the classroom the film still failed to make any kind of impression on me; the kids form a Dead Poets Society and read poetry to one another in some kind of alcove, but I didn't get much out of any of this I'm afraid; no major insights from the characters and no real interesting dialogue. Despite there being a good number of students only 2 of them are given any real development; Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Jim Carrey here and Knox Overstreet (Josh Charles). The former with his overbearing father dictating how he should live his life and the latter with his obsession with a cheerleader who is dating a jock. Both are coming-of-age story arcs, but the latter is rather trite and uninteresting whereas the former is a more interesting thread albeit a tad clichéd in all honesty. Whilst neither of these story arcs are brilliant, they do at least provide the film with some much needed character development and momentum.Still having said all that the film isn't all bad; the cast are likeable enough (the film boasts an early appearance from a very young Ethan Hawke). Robin Williams is always a welcome presence in any film and does a solid enough job here (although I must confess that I think he has been better in several other films). There are some powerful moments towards the end of the film and the final scene shown in the film is iconic and memorable.However, for me, Dead Poets Society, for the most part was rather dull and uninvolving - I also found it rather repetitive which also added to the tedium. For me, there were simply too many negatives and not nearly enough positives.

Having taught English for 43 years, I have stood in the place Robin William's character has. Some days you look out over the herds of kids that pass before you and you cry for them. As a teacher who put his heart and soul into what I did, I tried to make impressions help them master life skills. The sad reality is that one does one's best to crack the numbers game. Every year we have a few of those students who we try to embrace and find the right direction for them, but we are so hamstrung. The first thing I thought when evaluating this film is the little group of kids that he dealt with. He got to know each of them intimately. Of course, it's a prep school, but even then he should have had a couple other full classrooms. What he does is admirable and exciting. That he throws himself into his work to such an extent is amazing. But let's face it. This is a formulaic film that has been done many times before. It is monument building and flying in the face of establishment whose soul purpose is to ruin these kids' lives. There's a kind of narcissism to think that in this group we have bunch of directionless idiots who could never think for themselves. It sends a positive message but the population is carefully put together to send that message. It's just not real.