Rating: 
Summary: Damon And Affleck At Their Top
Review: "Good Will Hunting", starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Robin Williams, and Minnie Driver, is one of the top ten greatest films of 1997. It was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, going on to win two: Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Williams). The plot, written by Damon and Affleck, is brilliant. It wonderfully despicts the dramatic side of recovery while adding some interesting wit in the perfect scenes. However, the wit never interrupts or overlaps the dramatic events. Director Gus Van Zant leads the cast and crew to accomplish this masterpiece beautifully. The chain of events always contain the perfect emotional background that keeps audiences watching closely. It later becomes more than just a secret math genius recovering from a painful childhood. The other plots combined with it offers a deeper understanding behind the main plots, namely the therapist's reflecting his wife's death and Will Hunting falling in love. Such level of drama keeps the intensity intact in the raging scenes. Unfortunately, Damon and Affleck have yet to release their follow-up screenplay.Matt Damon and Minnie Driver earned an Oscar nomination for their performances (Best Actor/ Best Supporting Actress). Damon seemed made for that role. As with Robin Williams, they desplict their character's emotions and turbulances to the fullest, offering audiences a more emotional feel. Williams proves that he's capable of performing dramatic films as well as his signature comedy. All other actors also desplict their presence wonderfully. "Good Will Hunting" is a great film for most audiences for enjoyment. Its quality proves that it will someday become a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: Tolerable film marred by juvenile script
Review: The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was directed by Gus Van Sant. Who would have ever imagined that the director of Drugstore Cowboy would turn out to be just another Hollywood sentimentalist at heart? Van Sant brings nothing to this movie that one wouldn't find in one of those old ABC afterschool specials. The film is yoeman work, but lacks anything organic or edgy. The actors try to force emotions that they can't find in the pathos-ridden script. Everything in this movie comes down to sentimental hog-wash. Yes Robin Williams has a good moment or two, and yes Matt Damon is nice to look at and maybe he can act, but every emotion is telegraphed from the top of the RKO tower.
This is the kind of drearily professional film that Hollywood seems to love praising as original and heartfelt and "real art." But it's really nothing more than a Joan Crawford movie dressed up with cuss words and tight t-shirts.
Rating: 
Summary: Better Will Hunting than given credit.
Review: After reading numerous reviews, i failed to see what i found most important in matt damon's involvelment on the film. Everyone is raving about his performance, however most forget that the screenplay was adapted by damon and affleck. A fact that i am surprised the self claimed movie buffs forgot. Just thought it was worth a mention.
Rating:
Summary: Your move, chief
Review: Good Will Hunting is a great character study. There is really no plot to speak of, because the characters in the film, all of them, are kind of in limbo. No one is going anywhere. In fact, that probably is the story because one of the characters has the ability to go all the way to the top and the fact that he does not care is frustrating to all the other characters in the film. That character is Will Hunting, played expertly by Matt Damon. He is a janitor at MIT who sees a difficult math problem on a chalkboard outside a lecture hall and solves it as easily as you or I would add a column of numbers together. The problem had been put there by a professor (Stellan Skarsgard) who challenged his entire class to try to solve it by the end of the semester. Will is a math genius, like Mozart on the piano or Bobby Fischer in chess. What normal people find impossible in math, he sees with complete ease. This opening scene at the university lets us see this side of Will before we see his other side- the side including his past and his temperment. He is a troubled man with a tough past. He spends his free time drinking with his friends (including real life best friend Ben Affleck, with whom he wrote this script) and getting into fights. He has made many trips to the local courtrooms. Eventually, Skarsgard gets "custody" of him in exchange for Will not going to jail. In return, Will will have to attend counseling sessions and work with Skarsgard on mathematical problems. We are introduced in the course of the film to two other characters who will play critical roles- Robin Williams as a psychiatrist and Minnie Driver who may become a love interest. This is a great performance by Damon, who gives us a complex character full of flaws and tough as nails. He allows us to watch him soften up as he learns a lot of life's lessons from people who truly care about him. We realize that this may be the first time in his life where that is the case. The film is not about any particular story, just a young man who is learning to trust life and the people who love him
Rating:
Summary: Great, moving effort
Review: It's hard to view "Good Will Hunting" without a certain detachment. After all, two young actor punks won Oscars for their screenplay - and considering this is a vanity project in the purest sense (they wrote it to give themselves some great roles), there's a strong urge to analyze the film rather than just watch it. But try to watch it and you'll see how strong it really is. Affleck and Damon have written an intelligent and engaging movie with some exceptionally moving and real moments. Williams is outstanding - few actors could deliver his key lines (and key silences) with the understated conviction he brings. Damon and Affleck, and their buddies, transcend the vanity project tag and really embody their characters. You're with them. You care about them. And so when the movie completes its rather conventional arc, you're happy that everything went pretty much the way you thought it would. Directed with an extremely perceptive and sensitive touch by Gus Van Sant, "Good Will Hunting" breaks no new ground, but it's not supposed to. It's an effective, simple, engaging character study with sharp performances. To add "and nothing more" to that sentence would be a travesty, since it's a rare movie that offers even that much. Well done, Ben n' Matt - write another one, huh?
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Superb
Review: I first saw this movie on T.V. a while ago, and thought that it was a very good movie. Then, I rented it and watched it more closely and now find it to be one of my favorite movies. Matt Damon is good as Will Hunting, a mathematical-genius janitor, but Robin Williams gives the all-star performance as Sean McGuire, the psychologist who helps him. While there is a lot of bad language and sexual dialogue, the meat of the plot is absolutely superb, shown by the Academy Award given to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for writing the screenplay. This movie hooks the watcher and makes him/her really care about what happens to the characters. There are funny parts, dramatic parts, and emotional scenes that can push one over the edge. Overall, one of the best movies I have ever seen. A definite must-see.
Rating:
Summary: Good Will Hunting
Review: First off I'd like to clarify that I'm really not a big fan of drama movies given a few exceptions. Good Will Hunting is indeed one of them. Not really knowing much about it and unaware of the props it had receiced, I watched it one evening when it came on TV. It was amazing. The movies is about a boy named Will (Matt Damon) who with his friends, drinks, goes in and out of jobs, and tends to get in a fair amount of trouble. After he goes to jail he is let out on two conditions: he continues to educate himself and he sees a psychiatrist (Robim Williams). From there the movie takes off as both Williams and Damon begin to hatch away at the parts of their lives that have deeply affected them both. The acting is superb and the overall feeling by the time the movie is over is just amazing. Like I said I'm not one to get emotional over a movie but by the time this one is over you can't help but to crack a smile.
Rating: 
Summary: A melodramatic disappointment.
Review: This is a great concept/story, and the set-up is good. However, the film takes a nosedive shortly after beginning, with tiresome and cliched characters and melodramatic scenes -- the "apple" scene being the exception. I think this movie is vastly overrated and filled with manufactured angst. I could not wait for it to end...and then I thought the ending was unfitting. The movie must serve as a sort of litmus test of personalities: those who love it and think it's brilliant, and those who, like me, think it's dreck.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Story
Review: In a way, this is the typical, cliched, conventional awe-inspiring movie that the Oscar Academy loves so much. It has most of its elements, indeed, still director Gus Van Sant is able to make it work without falling into some easy traps and melodramatic common-places. Matt Damon plays Will Hunting, apparently a young loser who hasn`t a bright future ahead of him. Yet, as he soon discovers, Will is in fact a bright, highly gifted youngster with an uncommon talent to maths. The plot is rich enough to showcase his growing process and further development, even if occasional predictable scenes unfold. Van Sant suceeds in delivering an enticing and poignant story about self-discovery, isolation, friendship and communication, yet it seems to gets dangerously close to Hollywood fluff in a couple of moments (just close, as it never becomes truly cutesy or embarassing). The acting also helps a little to make the effort work, since besides Damon it includes convincing performances from Robbin Williams, Minnie Driver and Ben and Casey Affleck. The soundtrack is a plus, too, including Danny Elfman and indie talents like Elliot Smith, the Dandy Warhols or Luscious Jackson. "Good Will Hunting" is a solid, consistent movie worth watching, yet it is far from being a milestone or a work of genius. It`s basically a good, well-told story with engaging elements.
Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Why are you still so ..... afraid of failure?
Review: First things first - this must be one of the greatest movies in recent Hollywood history. Like all truly great movies, this one is built multi-dimensionally, with an intelligent large-scale development (global movie structure, several parallel stories between main characters, excellent dialogs in major scenes), while at the same time realizing that beauty lies in the detail (shading of supporting characters and interactions between them, witty dialogs in 'smaller' scenes which are not directly related to the main plot, music which beautifully underlines the plot and the characters). With respect to supporting roles, I can only think of one other movie where they are portrayed with more texture and depth, Heat by M. Mann. In Good Will Hunting there are several different, but connected plots developing at the same time on multiple levels, and it feels like every single one of those plots could make a solid movie on its own. On the highest level there are relationships between Will and his girlfriend, between Will and his best buddy, and Will and his tutor No. 1 (Sean). Then, on the next lower level, we have parallel stories between Will and his tutor No. 2 (Math Prof Gerald), and between Sean and Gerald (actually this one is my favorite sub-plot in the whole movie). Going even further down, you can find small pearls, for example those beautiful sketch roles of Will's two other buddies, Billy and Morgan, or the stereotypical pairing of extrovert math professor with his introvert Russian assistant. What I absolutely love about this movie are the dialogs. There are some heavy artillery dialog scenes: Sean telling Will he doesn't know a first thing about his life as an orphan just because he read Oliver Twist, Sean telling Will it's not about his girlfriend being perfect or him being perfect but it's about being perfect for each other, Skylar asking Will why is he afraid to come with her to California, Chuckie telling Will 'you don't owe it to yourself - you owe it to me', Sean asking Gerald why he's still so f...g afraid of failure, Sean telling Will it's not his fault... And then there are those beautiful 'side-dish' dialogs: Prof. Gerald trying to find Will in the workshop and talking to those two men who basically tell him to piss off, funny 'pickled' kiss between Will and Skylar on their first date, Gerald asking Sean to become a counselor for Will and Sean replying with 'How many shrinks did you go to before me? Barry? Henry? Not Rick!' For lot of people the story is not realistic enough (kid with mind of a genius, knowing everything about everything) and/or too stereotypical (poor kid making it big by listening to his heart). All I can say is: a) the story is not trying to be very realistic, it is also symbolic and abstract, and b) every novel, poem, movie or song in the last five thousand years is basically about same things: love and money. But we still like them because the same old story is (almost) always presented in a different way, there's always a new angle. I mean, the story is ancient, so it's not so much about what the story is about, it's much more about how the story is told. And this story is told in a way that every young person out there, no matter how intelligent or how talented he or she might be, can get inspired to go Good Will Hunting! As I already said - this is a very, very good movie. But it's not 100 percent perfect. And that's a good thing. There's a line near the end of the movie, when Sean is telling Will his counseling is finished and asks him if he would like to see his file. Will asks Sean if he's had any personal experience with child abuse and Sean replies 'yes, my father was an alcoholic, mean f...g drunk.' I think that's a bit too much, I mean, it makes Sean a perfect counselor (his wife dying of cancer, holding his dying friend in Vietnam, smelling the paint in the Sistine Chapel, etc). That's the only real misperfection I can find in the movie... and that makes it perfect. Look at us, we're all imperfect, we all have our own little peccadilloes. And that's exactly why we're perfect for each other. And that's probably why this movie is perfect for myself.
|
