Rating: 
Summary: Historically Moving for Those of Us Who Remember.....
Review: I was AMAZED with "Mona Lisa Smiles" and was totally unprepared for my reaction to the film. I do not ever remember feeling more like, "We've Come a Long Way Baby," (a play on the Virginia Slims ads in the 70's/80's) than after watching this movie. I can remember so clearly how women were not put in positions of advancement - no matter how intelligent they were and how men were paid so much more for doing the same jobs even though they hadn't been with the company as long.I graduated from high school in the mid-70's and although things had changed somewhat from the 50's, I grew up wanting to MARRY an attorney rather than BE an attorney. Later I was accepted to law school in my 40's. But in the 50's - Yale only had 5 slots for women in their law program. My mother was a product of this time and she passed her beliefs along to her daughters. Julia Roberts is great as always in this movie. She becomes romantically involved in a romance - but ultimately character issues come into focus. This movie will probably not have as much meaning for those under 40 - but it is a wonderful film if just for the historical significance in capturing an era. This movie literally made me cry and realize how far women have come.
Rating: 
Summary: A catfight or two would have made the movie even better!
Review: This isn't a brilliant cinematic accomplishment by any means, but it is definitely an entertaining story. Julia Roberts portrays an art history professor from Wellesly who has a difficult time adjusting to the fact that most of her brilliant students have no professional ambitions of their own and simply want to get married and have babies when they graduate from college. Roberts is excellent in the film, but the younger actresses are also very good, most notably Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, and Ginnifer Goodwin. Some people will probably be turned off by the attitudes about women that are depicted in the film, but that's the way things were done 50 years ago, and the fact that we're so bothered by it when we watch the film shows that the director has done a fine job. What bothered me about the movie was the way that several of the characters interacted with each other. Dunst's character was NASTY, and in the course of a two-hour film, she exposes her best friend's deepest secret to a large crowd, lies to one of her friends and convinces her that her boyfriend is cheating on her (he's not), calls another friend of hers a tramp (once again, in front of a crowd), and writes several controversial editorials in the school paper that everyone disagrees with. After all of that, no one really lashes out at her at all. It's true that Dunst's character is coping with her own problems, but I don't think that any girls would let their friend get away with all the crap that Dunst pulls in the movie. I was hoping that someone would haul off and slap her at the end, but no one did, and that was disappointing. There were also some things that bothered me about Julia's character, especially the fact that such a strong and independent woman would have an affair with a professor who was openly sleeping with his students. That was a major thing that I didn't understand at all. All that aside, though, it was still an entertaining movie. My boyfriend called it a "chick flick," and I agree that the film probably appeals to women more than it does to men. It's worth watching, though, and I'd recommend it to everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Be prepared for Julia's megawatt smile
Review: This is basically what is called by guys worldwide a "chickflick". Apart from that, it's an alright film. It's based in the fifties, with a bunch of girls who are at "finishing school", and get to take days off just because they're married. And the teachers etc, turn a blind eye! There's a great cast in this, including of course Julia Stiles, mega-watt grin Julia Roberts, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Kirsten Dunst playing only what can be described as not a very nice girl. The actresses are great, and really dress, act and sound like they're playing fifties gals. I'm not quite sure who my favourite character was. Maybe Giselle (Maggie Gyllenhaal). She was the one who basically slept around. I really did think she was going to be the one who ended up pregnant, but she never did. (She was also given contraception by a member of staff, who in turn got sacked!) There are quite a few scenes where she looks almost teary, and says to the teacher she had a fling with that they "needed to talk". But this storyline never seems to go anywhere. The extras are OK on this DVD, there are some fascinating statistics about girls/colleges then and now. The statistics are really mindblowing. Apart from that, you've got an Elton John music video, a couple of standard featurettes, and not much else. This is a good film, despite being a little too long, and tedious. If you can sit through it to actually review guys, you must have liked some aspect of it!
Rating:
Summary: Great Movie
Review: I am amazed at all the negative reviews for Mona Lisa Smile. This was the best movie I have seen in ages. Julia Roberts as always was terrific. I guess you really can't take these reviews seriously for I go over to School of Rock with Jack Black(probably the worst movie I have ever seen & he is the worst actor)& the movie is almost all positive reviews including Ebert & Roeper.What's with that. Don't miss Mona Lisa Smile.It is a breath of fresh air from what is out there.
Rating:
Summary: INSPIRATIONAL! Don't believe the negative hype
Review: First I just have to say that I was beyond shocked when I saw all the negative reviews. Of course, most of them were written by men who just "didn't get it" so they rely on the old "chick-flick" "male-bashing" "anti-marriage" crap. This movie is NOT anti-men or anti-marriage or anti-1950's. It's a movie, it's not preaching and saying "do this or else...". So many reviewers seemed to take it personally! Get over yourselves! The actresses actually went through "finishing school" for 2 weeks before shooting began and learned exactly what the girls had to learn back in the 1950's about how to behave, so they sat correctly, stood correctly, spoke correctly... They even wore (this is my favorite part) authentic 1950's undergarments! Talk about uncomfortable. But that just shows how truly authentic this movie actually is. The movie is just phenomenal. The acting, directing, lighting, plot, authenticity... I could go on and on. One of the best scenes is in the beginning, the first time that Katherine teaches Art History- you probably won't truly understand how incredible (and hilarious) this scene is unless you have ever taken Art History!! Julia Roberts' character was phenomenal~ the look on her face at the end of the first class and the emotion in her eyes, it was just priceless. Then, contrast that to the scene towards the end when she puts up slides of the 1950's magazine advertisements (after Kirsten Dunst's character writes the nasty article about her in the school's paper), it's just incredible. As for the many attacks on the believability of Kirsten Dunst's character, I disagree. I don't understand why they found her so "fake". I found her character facinating, as well as Julia Roberts (who is incredible in everything she does), Maggie Gylinhal (I know, I spelled it incorrectly, sorry Maggie!), all the girls, amazing... The storyline is TRULY inspirational! Katherine was a woman who lived by HER rules, no one elses. She could have taken the easy way out and stayed and conformed to the outlandish rules of the college, but she made the difficult and NOBLE choice and left. She had a wonderful and profound impact on these girls lives. She did NOT try to turn them into herself, she simply wanted them to live by THEIR rules, have their OWN opinions, and helped them to see that they had a choice in every aspect of their lives, that THEY could define their lives, not the college, not their parents, not their boyfriends... Just fabulous. :-)
Rating:
Summary: Learning Goes Both Ways
Review: I liked this movie more than I expected. Rather than being one-sided, as I thought it might be (i.e., Julia Roberts brings feminism to, I believe they called it, "the most conservative College in the US."), Julia Roberts' character also learned that being able to "have it all" or, in the context of this movie, "pro-choice," can mean actually wanting to be a wife and mother and run the home. This is one of the rare movies I may buy.
Rating: 
Summary: A complete waste of time
Review: A complete waste of time.
Rating:
Summary: A steaming, festering pile of offensive crap
Review: This movie is beautiful, and well-acted. However, the premise is pure crap, and the characters are ridiculous parodies. The really offensive thing is that it's basically an attack on an entire ethnic group -- white, anglo-saxon protestant women. If something like this was made about any minority group -- let's say, Jews -- there would be people with pitchforks marching on the offices of the studio. However, here, WASPs are portrayed as rigid, unfeeling, cruel, shallow, simpleminded and vaguely fascistic. Every single one of them, and at one of the top schools in the country. I doubt very much if Wellesley in the fifties was populated by women as dumb and awful as this, and the effort to portray them that way is more than a little offensive.
Rating: 
Summary: Could've been more than just another chick flick . . .
Review: As a man, let me just say this and get it out of the way: yes, this is a "chick flick." Too bad the director pandered more to sentimentality and notions of "sisterhood" than sticking to the foundation of the story's core roots, i.e. conformism, traditionalism, consumerism, and how they shaped the modern American woman. I thought Mona Lisa Smile could've been a lot more than what it was. Julia Roberts plays an idealistic art professor who goes to the most prestigious woman's university in America to "reform" the university's way of teaching and in turn the way of the students' thinking. Roberts is a cardboard character. The audience is meant to identify with her forward thinking character in the backwards 1950s. She is an independent, rebellious woman, too busy fighting for women's independence to see what she really wants. Unfortunately all the other "girls" in the film aren't much more original. Each one of the four student "girlfriends" we follow represents in almost cookie cutter form the key roles middle and upper class women were allowed to play in the 1950s: free thinking, sexually promiscuous bohemian, rigid house wife who stands by her man, career driven yet unable to balance career with family, and the ugly duckling who finds self esteem and thus a man. The scenes with the college students played like a bad Lifetime movie. However, the classroom scenes had a bit of a twist on the usual Hollywood standard of "smart teacher reforms troubled kids" where Roberts was instead a "free thinking teacher that counsels conformist kids." The best scene of the film is where Robert's turns the class around from a bunch of book-memorizing snobs into women who really examine who they are and how they are perceived. The DVD has very few special features. The standard interviews where the actors talk about the movie is spent mainly discussing the role women played in the 1950s and how society and a consumer culture dictated a lot of those roles. No one really talked about their characters. Probably because the characters weren't that interesting. All-in-all Mona Lisa Smile interesting as a look at mid-20th century middle to upper-class women, but as a movie with engrossing characters and a powerful plot it fails miserably.
Rating:
Summary: Elevated by an Impressive Supporting Cast of Characters.
Review: In 1953, Californian Modern Art enthusiast Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) gets a position teaching Art History at Wellesley College, one of the premiere upper-crusty women's colleges of the day, where the nation's brightest and most affluent young women received their education before marrying the nation's brightest and most affluent young men from nearby Harvard University. Katherine is at once taken aback by how sharp and motivated her students are and, in what seems to her a contradiction, how few ambitions they have beyond marrying and raising children. Katherine parts with the school's conventions in teaching modern art and in encouraging her students to harbor ambitions beyond the perfection of their homemaking skills. "Mona Lisa Smile" was written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal and directed by Mike Newell. I have to give the writers credit: By the end of this film, its large and well-drawn supporting cast and even follow-through to the very end of the story had me convinced that it must be based on a book. It's not based on a book. The novel of the same name, written by Deborah Chiel, was based on the film. This is just an extremely well-constructed screenplay that is unusually thorough in developing its supporting characters. This excellent supporting cast truly is "Mona Lisa Smile"'s greatest asset and the most compelling reason to see the film. This is a large cast that is universally terrific, so I'll just mention the best of the best: Marcia Gay Harden -one of our finest character actors- hits the nail on the head once again as Nancy, Wellesley's professor of poise. Kirsten Dunst does some of her best work as Betty, a student whose arrogant, vicious nature can't save her from the realities of her own imperfect marriage, although, ironically, imperfection might save Betty from her own nature. Juliet Stevenson makes an impression in a small role as the college's forward-thinking nurse, Amanda Armstrong. Maggie Gyllenhaal is Giselle, a radical student by Wellesley standards, noted for her many affairs with older men. Ginnifer Goodwin is a good-natured, bright, but chubby student named Connie, who thinks less of herself than others do. I won't go on -even though I don't want to short change any member of this cast- but a couple more recognizable names are Topher Grace, who plays the suitor of a "Wellesley girl", and you can catch a glimpse of singer Tori Amos performing at Betty's wedding. I have yet to mention Julia Roberts. All I can say is that she is Julia Roberts, Movie Star, and this is a very suitable role for her. Lest you assume from the plot description that "Mona Lisa Smile" is a post-War feminist rant, I should say that this is not the case. Katherine believes that her students' minds will be wasted as ideal homemakers and corporate wives. Her students don't always agree. The film is about a group of diverse young women and one older one who, through their experiences of college's last semester, learn how they want to live. They all discover that they have more choices than they once believed. And then they make those choices according to their own priorities. Consider Your Options is about as preachy as the film gets. The DVD: Bonus features include a music video for "Heart of Every Girl" by Elton John, filmographies for the director, writers, and cast, and 3 featurettes: The film's cast comments on the role of art in their lives in "Art Forum". "College Then and Now" is part making-of documentary and part discussion of the decisions faced by women graduating from college in 1953 versus present day. "What Women Wanted: 1953" is a documentary about some of the social realities of the post-War era, including interviews with the film's creators and cast. If you only want to watch one extra, try "College Then and Now". "Art Forum " isn't worth your time. There are 2 unavoidable previews on the disc. Dubbing is available in French, Subtitles in English and in French.
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