Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 12, 1995 TAG: 9508140130
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Think "To Sir With Love," or "Conrack, You Crazy," or "Stand and Deliver."
"Dangerous Minds" treads on this familiar ground, with Michelle Pfeiffer playing ex-Marine LouAnne Johnson, who takes a job teaching some "Academy" high-schoolers in an inner-city California school.
Unfortunately, "Academy" is a euphemism for the troubled class, and when Miss Johnson walks into her classroom for the first time - clad in a frilly blouse and neat suit - the boom boxes are blaring and the stares are practically homicidal.
Johnson, no Suzy Cream Cheese, goes home, hits the books (``Assertive Discipline," for example) and figures out that what she needs to know, no book can teach her.
She returns to school in a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, black boots and a black leather jacket. She shows the kids a few karate moves, tries out a few innovative sentences on the chalkboard to teach grammar (``I choose to die" - find the verb) and gets called into the principal's office for being silly.
In spite of the warning, she bribes the kids with candy bars, introduces them to poetry via Bob Dylan and takes them to an amusement park as a reward for sticking with the poems.
It's not all smooth sailing. A couple of kids drop out, she's about to lose her brightest student to the teen pregnancy program and the violence of the streets is always just on the periphery.
What this movie does best is record the absolutely minuscule achievements that pass for victories in this kind of classroom. The wise-beyond-his-years Hispanic student Emilio (beautifully played by Wade Dominguez) lifts his tired eyes from the paper on his desk and asks a question about a line of poetry. The pregnant, brilliant Callie (Bruklin Harris) turns to another student and explains with searing clarity the sarcasm in another line. The camera follows the students into the library where they awkwardly but endearingly scan the titles for books by some dude named Dylan Thomas for Miss Johnson's Dylan-Dylan Contest.
What this movie doesn't do well is avoid the easy pay-off in some scenes. It's hard to avoid the cliche when the film's premise is itself so familiar. But when one of the students plaintively says that Johnson is "our Mr. Tambourine Man," the collective groan in the theater ought to be audible. (It isn't because TV-fed American audiences have built up a frightening immunity to sentimentality and cliche.)
This is Canadian TV director John Smith's first feature film, and it shows, to some extent. The screenplay by Ron Bass (who wrote ``Rain Man" and ``The Joy Luck Club") has its moments, but Bass by no means is adept at avoiding the predictable. Although the dialogue sounds right, it never takes the characters anywhere new or unexpected.
As for Pfeiffer, she's OK. Greatness would have required somehow registering a more subtle shift in the character's attitude toward her students and her job.
But "Dangerous Minds" is short on subtlety. It wants awfully badly to not make anyone feel too bad about the state of inner-city American education and inner-city life in general. Smith and Bass rush through those first uncomfortable scenes in which Johnson is trying to win over her class as if in fear of making the audience uncomfortable.
Audiences OUGHT to feel uncomfortable. The simple truth is, "Dangerous Minds" just plays it too safe to have as much impact as it ought to have.
\ Dangerous Minds **1/2
A Hollywood Pictures release, showing at Salem Valley 8. Rated R for profanity, 96 minutes.
by CNB