Stream it now The History Boys 2006

 

When I heard about this movie I was excited to see it, but when I watched it I was very unhappy with the result.

The acting is decent, the story is so-so, and there's not much else involved. There are some well written scenes, but they are few and far between. They spend an incredible amount of time sympathizing with a pedophile, and that's not the kind of message we need to hear.

Maybe if I hadn't expected so much from it I wouldn't have been as let down, but I was and there's no stopping that.

There is a story here to be told but this movie upset me as I didn't like or understood the mixed messages this film was trying to convey. Pedophilia is not a light hearted matter.

THE HISTORY BOYS was the perfect nightcap for an Anglophile such as myself, a witty, fast paced thinker that delivers on all the right emotional levels. Even watching it on my laptop, late at night, I became completely absorbed in the world of the students and their passionate, caring teachers.

Centered around a late-teens group of English schoolboys, and taking place in the early 80's, the play and its resulting adaptation is concerned with the plight of eight ambitious lads seeking entrance to Oxford and Cambridge. Helping them to prepare for the battery of exams are a charming ensemble of adults. The least charming, the headmaster (Clive Merrison), is a bounderish sixty-something with sky high expectations and little tolerance for the boys' clever antics. Mrs. Lintott (Frances de la Tour), is the sole estrogen-influenced professor, and she acts out her role with a kind of world-weary flair, a been there done that feel that you feel you can rely on. The most objectionable to the thin skinned is Hector (Richard Griffiths), an eccentric culture maven who's other interests are out of bounds when under 18.

So far I've tried to write the review without the word "gay," because that's the aspect of the film most American audiences seem to dwell on. The concept of sexuality is altogether more open minded in Britannia, and experimentation seems to be expected to a degree in all- male schools, a concept that seems alien across the pond. There's a lot of the stuff in the movie, the experimentation, but it's more suggested than shown and in the end rather harmless. However, this seems to be the thing others get hung up on, unfortunatelly, rather than the expert handling of mood, a sense of melancholy that Alan Bennett, the playwright, excels in.

Other than that actors sometimes seem to forget they're in a movie rather than a play, the cast is superb in their respective roles, entirely believable. The soundtrack might be worth a few euros too, made up of some inspired early 80's postpunk and new wave cuts.

The direction really is good too, because although the attentions seems to be more on the words, camera angles and shots are visually very interesting and must be acknowledged.

The lion's share of the credit, though, should go to the screenplay, which has the crucial boon of being adapted by the playwright, Alan Bennett, himself. One-liners and witticisms abound, and clever references and wordplays will not be missed by the culturally clued-in and attentive eared crowd.

Though I'm a bit disappointed in my fellow Yanks' panning of the film, THE HISTORY BOYS is nonetheless fully satisfying and entertaining for the open minded. The word, I think, is "stonkers." Absolutely stonkers!

Witty, interesting and enjoyable in the main but isn't this just Dead Poets Society with more than a hint of homosexuality added?

forgettable and has little to no plot. and apparently everybody in the movie is gay. which is gay.

The film is deceptively insightful, with the quick dialogue and constant poetic references, but overall left me indifferent. I've heard people tell me I need to "watch it again" to get it, but even after a second time through, I still feel I'm doing the movie a favor by giving it a 5/10.

When a boisterous group of boys make the highest grades their school has ever seen, they are set up in a special group in order for them to become more polished in order to get into England's most prestigious schools. When their free-thinking teacher, Hector, played by Harry Potter's Richard Griffiths fails to please the Headmaster, he brings in the younger Irwin to polish the boys for upstanding university standards. Unwilling at first, the boys eventually bend to Irwin's methods, leaving behind Hector's. In addition to the struggle to make the proper marks, elements of questioning homosexuality as well as sexual advances by Hector make the situations all the more difficult.

Wow, great film! Acting was first class!

There are some stage plays that seem to be made for crossing over into film. Plays that just "fit" in Hollywood; the History Boys is not one of them. Characters were under-developed, acting was overdone, the directing style was flat and still. On a personal level, if I had a teacher who groped my genitals every time I hitched a ride with him, I don't think I would find any humor in it. Such was the case in the film. I kept finding myself cringing at the idea of any of this happening in real life (mainly, because it does happen in real life). Of course, there are some deeper themes here but, all-in-all, it's a story about a sick teacher who fondles his students and then is made to look like the victim under a hard-headed (and foolish) head-master. At the end of the day, somewhere between the un-subtitled scene spoken completely in French and one of the students telling his teacher to "suck him off" as a way of displaying gratitude (which, in fact, the teacher is excited to go through with), the movie lost me. I felt like laughing in the final "motorcycle" scene but then felt sort of bad because, I suppose, they were trying to be serious at that point (nice timing). The sad thing is, the only point at which the movie held my attention was when the teacher/molester got confronted by the headmaster and I found myself thinking "finally, some fricken' justice for this jackass." Then, as I already said, the film made him look like the victim...ridiculous. All in all, I HATED this movie. I'll give it one star because the seasoned actors were at least believable (even though the other characters, plot and theme were not).

Loved the film and loved it on stage. I saw the film first so I didn't find it awkward as some people have mentioned. I saw it recently on stage in London and while you can't beat the energy of a live performance I thought both casts were amazing.

I like the idea of learning for learning's sake. Now that I'm out of school I can enjoy Shakespeare without having to memorise endless quotes for an exam. It's good to see some of the original boys doing well in other projects.