El estudiante (2009)

Simply A Masterpiece

How sad is this?

A Major Disappointment

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I watched this movie because the buzz was too much already and I thought something good had to have. Big mistake."El estudiante" has a good idea of a story but the script is so bad it makes good actors (like Jorge Lavat or Norma Lazareno) sound and look false and overacted. With cheesy and prefabricated dialogues it's nothing more than a very sad try to do a Hollywood film but in Guanajuato, MX. Some scenes are such clichés that you could literally translate them to English and name the movies they are in.The director obviously has no experience directing actors or he is very bad at it. You can see how very talented actors struggle with scenes and end up giving a very poor performance. There are acting shortcomings one can't believe a director could let them make it to the final cut.The only thing they did good was to merchandise the movie and build buzz around it. How they did that? Publicizing the fact that the writer and director were unexperienced (amazingly in México that's a box office booster) and then using easy and shameless emotional manipulation in the movie to make everyone talk about it.Very good work by the DP but, then again, wrapped by the rest, it's sad.

Highly recommended by some people I really respect I went to see this movie. The main argument behind the recommendation was "the message" this movie delivers. After 90 minutes of excruciating pain, I can tell you: the message are bad news. This movie takes back Mexican Cinema more than 40 years - at least- and it looks like the movie was made right in the 60's, along with some Mexican Marga Lopez' classics such as La Edad de la Inocencia or La sombra de los hijos. With a cast of unknown actors -just three recognizable faces - and a generic soapy theme, it is pretty hard to expect great deliverance and quality in acting, yet the amateurish use of cameras and obvious lack of direction results in a total fiasco. However, the main problem here is the screenplay that reduces Don Quixote novel to mere phrases or quotes recited with childish style by the actors. The interaction between the old character and his much younger counterparts is never truly developed and ends up being totally unreal and not believable - not to mention the lack of modern language that clearly sets this movie as an anachronism. Trust me there is no college educated Mexican young person who speaks like the characters or who does not know Jose Alfredo Jimenez - for Christ sake , being Mexican and not knowing him is a blasphemy !!Probably the decision of not including crude language has to do with the intention of creating a "family movie with high values", well if that was the intention, the result is a pamphlet or a brochure ...mere propaganda, and as you know...propaganda is no good.On the other hand if the goal was to make a movie about bonding, friendship and the continuous learning despite the generations gap, they may had take some lessons from other sources. Grand Torino or UP rings a bell, don't they ???

This is just another good example of what I consider a bad Mexican movie... It cheaply pretends to achieve a strong motivational score based on ethics and values, but it's simply Utopia and does not reflect reality at all.In a futile attempt to paint a perfect world, the movie simply goes from one twisted story to another one and yet, another more, where life suddenly and magically turns right at the influx of the "profound" philosophy literally taken from Cervantes' "Don Quixote".Sorry, but no more than another Mexican soap opera taken to the big screen...

This movie is incredible. Incredibly bad that is. It is pompous, preposterous, unrealistic, naive, a postcard-like, in the vein of the famous, so much criticized and ridiculed t.v. "sopa operas" or "culebrones" coming out of Mexico. It presents Mexico and its people as some caricatures of what the film director would like them to be. The old fellow preaches to his much younger fellow students and they just nod, there is a lesson about drug taking, u see, u should not because then u will have no money to pay so the bad drug dealer will have u beaten up. U should try to read verses from Don Quijote to the complete strangers, it will make their day and yours. The old man preaches to others about life but when his equally old wife dies (and the best possible kind death it was - in her sleep) he despairs and asks the Lord the most naive and senile questions. It is all too schmaltzy, too sentimental, to corny. The student pregnant with her teacher's baby baptizes it Alicia, like the old men's dead wife. He bursts into tears at hearing this. How touching, how true. They are true friends u know, him and a group of 20 year olds, because they have known him for a few months, he is only 40 years older and he preached to them. Like in real life. The old man talks to the statue of Don Quijote and admits he has learned a lot at the university. I wonder what, a few words that the young use these days? Because nothing else. Neither do we, we learn nothing true and real about the students in Mexico these days, nothing about the old days and passing away, nothing about the differences between being young and old. In addition the cinematography is poor, the fim has a grainy transfer, the photos are poor, we see very little of the supposedly beautiful Guanajuato. I like "feel good" movies, nothng wrong with them from time to time. But they must be made in a clever, intelligent, convincing way, not like this. The most amazing of this cinematic "experience" was to watch it in a full cinema in Mexico. The room liked the film, the room found it good. Which says a lot about the state of mind of a typical Mexican person, who is polite, polished, smiling and pleasant, but apparently also superficial.