Rating: 
Summary: A must see for law students
Review: This movie does very accurately represent the first year of law school. I heard some great advice once: Watch it in August before you ship off to school, and watch it over Thanksgiving when you're home - laugh when you can identify your friends from school in the movie. And, contrary to the first reviewer's experience, I did read Carbolic Smoke Ball first year - but, I went to NYU, not Harvard.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest movie ever made, at least about law school.
Review: This movie is a must own, and a must watch for both prospective, current, and past law school attendees. Other than the truly corny love story, it is pretty pathetic, the law school related scenes are eerily realistic. Kingsfield is the exemplar of the tough, old-school, Socratic method law professor, and every law student should be familiar with his style. The only question I have about this movie is, when is it coming out on DVD?
Rating: 
Summary: Boring
Review: This movie is so boring. I painfully watched it during my first year of law school. The plot is thin and predictable and there is hardly any excitement in this movie.
Rating:
Summary: The most accurate law school movie ever!
Review: This movie shows the brutal truth about law school more accurately than any other movie made to this date. However, its rather old, and doesnt have much humor to it, so expect a bummed feeling after watching this movie. Its not one of those inspiring movies that leaves you happy or motivated.
Rating:
Summary: Undergraduates Interpret Paper Chase Ending
Review: Warning! If you don't want to know how the film ends, don't read this review. I showed the film to my undergraduate Law & Politics students. The mostly first and second year students had this to say when I asked them why Hart threw his grades into the sea:
"Just graduating from Harvard was all he needed."
"He did not want to become a lawyer."
"He already knew he had conquered that old duff of a teacher."
"He had realized the school and its pressures were B.S."
"His girlfriend was right."
"Other things were more important to him like his girlfriend."
Rating:
Summary: A Film at many levels
Review: Well... I DID take this class -- Contract Law -- and I took it at Harvard Law School. The class was not ~exactly~ like the one presented in the film, but my Harvard experience was pretty much like the film.I saw the film in the theatre, originally, weeks before I started classes at Harvard and it was as if Kingsfield directed his questions into the audience and I wanted to dive under the theatre seat. Obviously I had not read the cases. "Hawkins versus McGee" may have been the first case, but I defy anyone to find "Carbolic Smoke Ball" in their editions of West's casebook on Contracts. My own study group was pretty much like the one shown in the film, except there were women in ours, so "The Paper Chase" is pretty much of a "buddy film" in that women play pretty much of the support role -- Kingsfield's daughter and the ever suffering Ashley who is disarming in her performance as she hands Hart the firearm her husband nearly uses on himself. Yet, these guys are very real and the movie captured the men of my first year study group, except for the effete Bell who they would have chomped down for breakfast -- better that they had Tom Cruise from "The Firm" add even more colour to the colourless first year students than Bell, "as in liberty Bell." Yet for its dated 1970's sexist subplots and sometimes silly characters, John Housman manages to hold it all together as the quintessential Harvard professor -- and don't get me wrong -- these grand old men are still alive and well and walk those halls working on those of us student who come into those classes with our "skulls full of mush." To this day I am deeply moved when Kingsfield describes his "little questions" spinning the tumblers of our minds and in so doing how this process led us to learn how to teach ourselves. Dated, quaint, and sometimes silly, this film never fails to move me to near tears and a recollection of what those magic years at Harvard were all about and what the process of learning, not just passing an exam, was all about.
Rating:
Summary: Inspirational! One of the best movies of all time!
Review: What else can I say that is not already written by the preceeding reviewers? Well, the movie did not just provide us with a plot on the pressures of being a Harvard Law student, but it provided an inspiration on how to succeed in post-high school education period. When the movie first came out in 1973, I was merely a young lad and was not very interested in the movie. However, I saw its effect on my older brother (who was going to a university at that time). When it was my time to enter university training, I had a chance to see the movie on my own for the first time and I was hooked myself. I noticed that even a few years after the movie was first released, there were many professors in the university that was inspired by Kingsfield's character that many chose to use the Socratic method of teaching. I have found that students want to form study groups and create outlines for each individual courses and share them with the members of the group. The same type of stress and desire was felt among these same students. Through the years, I have watched the movie numerous times and I have never gotten tired of it. In fact, I watched it so many times now that I have memorized (my apologies to the character Kevin [who has a photographic memory but no analytical ability]) the dialogue. Get this movie. You won't be sorry if you did. I just hope they would release a DVD version of this soon.
Rating: 
Summary: Great movie, but...
Review: What's the deal with the description on the back of the DVD package that twice (!) lists John Houseman's character as Professor "Knightsfield" (not "Kingsfield", as anyone who's seen the movie would know)? Do the home entertainment folks at Fox even LOOK at the movies before they write the copy? And it's not the first time I've seen inexcusable errors on their home video packaging. Really pathetic quality control. Great movie, though, and it WAS nice to finally see it on DVD. So, I guess I should be grateful. But, hey Fox Guys, next time check your facts BEFORE you go to press. Jeez.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect Mirror of Life as a 1L
Review: Wonderful! As I have recently completed my first year of law school, I could not more strongly endorse the film as required "sustenance" for the aspiring law student. Expect this type of environment and you will have established an initial foundation for success (although the academic atmosphere of law school is not nearly as vicious thirty years later.) Required viewing for all prospective attorneys.
Rating:
Summary: Bogus Hollywood Moment: Throwing Grades into Sea
Review: Yeah, great film, holds up well over the years. But no Harvard law student would have thrown his unopened grades into the ocean. Particularly one that was as dedicated and competitive as Hart. It would be like a lawyer trying a case and leaving the courtroom before hearing the verdict. One can understand and, in a mercenary way, perhaps admire Hart if he pretended not to care about the grades for the sake of impressing his erratic, anti-establishment/anti-hippy girlfriend. She doesn't make much sense, but she is cute and alluring. But to actually throw the grades into the sea? No. Apart from that, the scenes of the workings of law school are pretty terrific. The characters of the study group are, for good and bad, very similar to people you actually find at law school. Particularly Bell. (By the way, did anyone notice that Hart's 3rd year advisor was Thirtysomething's Miles Drentell? He is exactly the type that would say, "Grades matter.") Yet, like lawyers themselves, they're not on the whole really awful people. Ford, the quintessential Harvard prepster, bails out James Naughton's character in class and even goes so far as to say that the subject is very difficult to understand. Hart himself is obviously very decent. And Kingsfield is meant to be feared, but moreover respected and admired. So the romance is a bit unrealistic, but nothing approaching Ally McBeal silliness. That aside, it's a solid film worth seeing more than once.
| 
