Review
MONA LISA SMILE
Starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal
Directed by Mike Newell.
Opens Friday, December 19
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Filmmaking by numbers – now anyone can make a Hollywood flick. All you need is one bankable star, two screenwriters who have seen Dead Poets’ Society and three young starlets.
Julia Roberts stars as Katherine Watson in Mona Lisa Smile, the latest "inspirational teacher" flick out of Hollywood. Watson is an idealistic art history professor from California who takes a coveted faculty position at Wellesley College. After her disastrous first lecture, she takes on the greater task of rousing the young women, three in particular, to be more than societal clichés. "I came here to teach leaders of tomorrow, not their wives," says Watson in an outburst.
All of this may sound like the makings of a good film, but unfortunately the story doesn’t move beyond superficialities. Watson soon develops a relationship with an Italian professor (Dominic West) and butts heads with faculty and alumni as she challenges her students to express themselves through independent thought. The film might as well have been called Dead Painters’ Society but it’s not even half as good. Julia Roberts is not Robin Williams and they are no breakout performances.
The biggest disappointments are the one-dimensional lead characters. Kirsten Dunst is Betty, a young woman so bent on getting married she fails to see that her new husband does not love her. Joan (Julia Stiles) is the class valedictorian and all-around superstar who is passing up law school for Harvard grad Tommy (Topher Grace). Maggie Gyllenhaal is Giselle, a girl expressing her sexuality to largely older and sometimes married men.
The girls’ characters show little growth and it’s particularly difficult to understand any of their motivations beyond personality flaws. Side characters, like the nurse fired from the school for giving out birth control and a young cellist finding love, prove to be much more interesting than the woes of the leads.
Just as Watson lectures that society has turned great painters into accessible art forms like "Monet in a box," director Mike Newell has done the same with film, creating art by numbers and giving the potentially inspirational story of a pioneering feminist a disheartening run-of-the-mill treatment. If these themes sound appealing, you would be better off to rent Far From Heaven for a truly progressive look into the repressed ’50s and the desire to break free of societal norms. There’s nothing swell about Mona Lisa Smile other than a few pretty faces. |
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