The English Teacher, one of the summer's highly anticipated indie offerings, falls short of good. While refreshingly sharply cut and concise, the parts fail to come together to make a compelling whole.
The Craig Zisk-directed film tells the story of Linda Sinclair (Julianne Moore), a high school English teacher who lives through her books without experiencing any thrills herself. When one of her star former students, Jason Sherwood (Michael Angarano), moves back home after struggling to succeed as a playwright in New York City, Sinclair decides to stage the play as her high school's drama production. Hijinks ensue.
Let me say right off the bat that I like this premise. It has good romantic comedy or even straight comedy potential. A high school putting on a super dark avant-garde New York play without being stymied by the school officials has great potential"”Waiting for Guffman meets School of Rock, if you will. And the character of Linda Sinclair, the pretty lady threatened with spinster-hood because she grades men like papers and gets her jollies from literature only, is good potential for a romantic comedy.
And there are parts of this movie that take a stab in that direction. Greg Kinnear shines as the drama teacher who oozes artistic superiority and pretentiousness from every pore, delivering some excellent one-liners. They play with the "dark play put on by high schoolers" irony a little bit. But unfortunately, everything fails to come together.
The English Teacher does this because it doesn't seem to know what kind of movie it wants to be"”it's not a romantic comedy, it's not a straight comedy, but it's too romantic and comedic to be labeled a straight "drama" in the sense in which we most often use the word today to apply to movies. And in part because it hovers in a vague middle ground between all of these genres, the film succeeds as none of them.
The love part of the film isn't heightened enough to make this a compelling love story, especially because of the awkward student-teacher-former-student dynamics. That's the kind of relationship you have to do some serious character work to make audiences invest in, and this movie didn't put the effort in to make the romance reasonable.
And while there are definitely jokes, they are pale shadows of what they could have been had a writer set out to put this cast in a comedy with the same premise. And finally, the romance and jokes that are present in the film and the slightly goofy and whimsical tone prevent it from being just a straight drama.
The film wasn't a pain to watch. The acting was particularly alright, from Julianne Moore and the other stars to the supporting cast (particularly Jessica Hecht and Norbert Leo Butz as Principal Trodie Slocum and Vice Principal Phil Pelaski respectively). The music was pleasant, and above all the film was a refreshingly tight 90 minutes in a world where it seems like everything has to be at least two hours no matter what damn story is being told.
But the wishy-washy stance on plot plus the failure to explain the bizarre events such as the love triangle and the unresolved douchiness of Jason Sherwood give this film a C grade. You are better off spending your money (and more importantly, your time) elsewhere.
