Freedom Writers Reviews
August 13, 2007
While it is, like its genre brethren, inspiring and uplifting, Freedom Writers glosses over so much material that it makes the process look too easy.
August 4, 2007
Ironically, the film features almost zero teaching. Despite much pedagogical posturing, it doesn't teach us much, either.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
February 27, 2007
Despite solid work from the engaging cast, there's nothing new here to distinguish Freedom Writers as anything beyond a C+.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
February 3, 2007
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/6
January 19, 2007
The film may be inspired by a true story, but it's a mishmash of scenes we've seen before, and for a film about original teaching methods, the storyline is surprisingly derivative and predictable.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
January 15, 2007
LaGravenese ("The Horse Whisperer") has a tendency to sanitize every scene, and when he hits the audience's emotional sweet spot and a few tears begin to flow, you have the feeling that the release is unjustified.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
January 15, 2007
Gee whiz, if Swank taught in the typical American school, there'd be no child left behind. They'd all be polishing apples and asking for homework.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
January 10, 2007
Freedom Writers will work for viewers with a penchant for this particular subgenre, but others might well find it too much of the same old thing.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
January 9, 2007
Our eager-beaver heroine suffers the kids' sarcasm, fails to earn their respect by bringing in a Tupac tape, then wins them over in a crucial scene that, fact-based or not, rings as false as anything in Dangerous Minds.
January 6, 2007
The only aspect of these flicks that's changed since the days of The Blackboard Jungle is that the leads have gotten prettier...and whiter.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
January 6, 2007
Freedom Writers is another exceptional teacher scenario not so different from the norm.
January 6, 2007
Sure, it was less obnoxious than Dangerous Minds but it was no The Substitute.
January 5, 2007
Freedom Writers confounds its own claims to veracity by coming across as a veritable textbook in itself -- a textbook of earnest, liberal, white-woman-in-the-blackboard jungle clichs.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
January 5, 2007
It's a truly inspiring story; pity the movie doesn't live up to it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
January 5, 2007
Annoying subplots and paper-thin villains ensure that the movie remains mired in mediocrity.
Original Score: 2.5/4
January 5, 2007
One teacher can make a difference in a troubled student's life. I learned this from To Sir, with Love, Dangerous Minds and Van Halen's Hot for Teacher video.
Original Score: 2.5/4
January 5, 2007
Never quite succeeds as anything more than Dangerous Minds Redux.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
January 5, 2007
This film fails to earn what Erin Gruwell earned in real life: credibility.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
January 5, 2007
Freedom Writers is a tribute to individualism wrapped in the most conformist of packages, one of those pictures where the message of the tale is flatly contradicted by the manner of the telling.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
January 5, 2007
Swank's scenes with the students spark with such energy that the rest of the movie... reminds you how formulaic it all is.
Original Score: 2.5/4