The Freedom Writers

[Kit Sober]

The Freedom Writers, with Hilary Swank, was to me a pretty monumental movie.

(I missed it in the theaters and just saw it on dvd, so it's been out a while.)

Hilary Swank plays a high school teacher who teaches her kids respect, sense of self-worth etc. in the tradition of "To Sir with love" and others, but the way she did it was monumental: She taught the kids that gang warfare was terrible by teaching them about the gang of the Nazi's, including having them earn the money to have a the woman who hid out Anne Frank come and speak in their class, taking them on a field trip to the Holocaust Museum, locating some other concentration camp survivors and having them come and speak to their class.

The writing the kids did is "The Freedom Writers Diary," which was a NY Times best seller, which book I think should be a required reading in high schools today.

[Raf]

Eh.

It's a decent story, but while the movie had some good moments, as a whole it fell pretty flat for me. I recommend it as a good message movie, but I didn't think it was any better than others in the genre: Dangerous Minds, To Sir With Love, Lean on Me and (best of the bunch in my opinion) Stand and Deliver. Don't get me wrong: I didn't dislike Freedom Writers. I just wouldn't call it monumental knowing that there are much better movies in the same genre.

JMO.

[mommy1968]

I liked it although its just another movie about kids from low bad families that grow up to be troublemakers, in gangs and drugs and all that. I've seen a lot of movies that portray these kind of children, but this was a little different. It was nice to see that it was based on a true story and that someone actually took time to help these children and try to help change their future.

The only part I didn't like was that the woman totally ignored her marriage and her home life and ended up divorced because she put the children first. That part kind of irked DH and I. But overall, what she did was a good thing. If she could reach that one group of children then that was atleast something.

Edited June 4, 2007 by mommy1968