Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

A Brilliant Conflict

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

A new teacher who comes in and changes the students' outlooks on life is a common theme in movies. "Conrack", "Stand and Deliver" and Mr. Holland's Opus" are examples. "Mona Lisa Smile" continues this motif. Julia Roberts plays a free-spirited bohemian who takes a job as an art history professor at a conservative college in the early 1950s and is displeased with the expectation that the girls will receive their degrees only to become homemakers.It's not any sort of great movie. The focus on the era's gender roles is developed enough, but it doesn't leave any room for subtlety. This is one movie that's all about being direct with its message (not just the gender roles, but the old-money WASPs' attitude towards minorities). I guess that it's worth seeing to understand the mindset of the 1950s and the falsity of the seemingly perfect lives that women were supposed to have after getting married.OK, not great. Maybe worth seeing once. I wonder how many people realized the irony of showing a Jackson Pollock painting...while co-star Marcia Gay Harden played Lee Krasner (Jackson Pollock's wife).

Women deserve better movies than this. Vapid, superficial. Some moments play out like a Julia Roberts' photo-op: teeth, smile, pout, tears. Emoting is not enough. One never gains a sense that Katherine Watson experiences any personal connection or passion for the subject she teaches. Characters are more like advertisement than three dimensional. Lacking depth. As if stereotypes could replace meaningfulness. Could have been a compelling movie that captured an era and expressed real stories of real women. Ginnifer Goodwin is the better part of this disaster. Would love to see an authentic treatment of the subject, which would require inquiry with actual people of the period. Disappointing. Missed opportunity.

The film centers on a woman who works as a professor in the 1950s at some college (played by Julia Roberts) who deals with art and her class consist of a few girls(one played by Kristen Dunst,Ginnfer Goodwin,Julia Stiles)and they all want to get married at a young age. Of course we see Dunst getting married and it falls apart and then we see Julia Stiles getting married to Topher Grace. And the whole film consists of seeing these girls getting married and attending art lessons. One of the women played by Jake Gyhellhalls' sister Maggie is in love with Dominic West who also has a thing for Julia Roberts . The film isn't anything to write home about but it wasn't too bad.

Not the worst movie out there, If you need to pleasantly kill a couple of hours of your life.This could be a good TV show for teaches. Decent cast, decent lines, decent visual, mostly summer. Little daily life at a decent college. The students are the girls from the decent /rich/ families.The only divination from the total decentness is Maggie's Gyllenhaal young character, however mild enough if to compare with her usual roles. Vintage fashion will be a bonus for those who fancy artichoke cuts, bouffant dress and the whole era of the first bikinis (no bikini in the movie).Shame that fashion will be pretty much all you'll learn about girls education of the time, as well as the time.