English 1280 – 23
Negative Review – Dead Poets Society

The movie centers on a group of gifted young students who are being held down by a repressive school system. They get classes from an inspirational teacher, who opens their eyes to the beauty of the world and their true potential. But, although the people in charge try to put them down, in the end they all seemingly find who they are – a prevalent plot amongst many movies. The only thing that makes this one different is because it ends with one of the boys committing suicide and the teacher getting fired. So much for the all's-well-that-ends-well moment at the end that is always the high point of movies like this. They do stand on their desks, though. So there's that. The teacher still gets fired, however. This movie falls easily into one of my least favorite movie genres, “the let's teach upper class white kids some creativity because they have it so hard in life” genre. Here, a bunch of uncreative, sheepish rich white kids attend a prestigious preparatory academy and are content to do what the administration and their parents tell them. There's Neil Perry whose dad wants him to become a doctor. There's Tom Anderson, who's stuck in an intellectual shell. All of them are under the thumb of the school's headmaster, Mr. Nolan. Then one day, John Keating, a new teacher, walks in and teaches them creative thinking through the power of stand-up comedy. So, instead of studying to become a doctor, Neil tries his hand at acting. Tom decides to assert himself a little bit. This leads to Neil committing suicide when his father forces him to quit acting. What's even less convincing about the movie is that these schools are designed to teach the way they teach and they do it quite well. They teach the kids to do what they're told and follow into their rich parents worlds' and become rich themselves. If all these