Rating: 
Summary: Mona Lisa...Ahead of Her Time
Review: Julie Roberts portrays Katherine Watson an Art History Professor beginning her first year of teaching at the prestigious Wellesley College in the Fall of 1953. As a Native of California she moves to New England for what she believes to be a great opportunity to teach other women. What she finds is a great invisible wall that divides her from her students by breeding and class not to mention ideals. Katherine Watson is energized by individuality and free thinking. Her students are driven by social status and the goal of marriage. The Wellesley students are all young women of high society. Their main focus in life is to find the perfect husband, live in the perfect house and have an "x" number of children. They are instructed on how to help their future husbands advance in their careers versus having one of their own. They are schooled in taking a back seat to everyone and everything. The theme of feminism is not missed here. Watson poignantly points out to her students that women have made various educational advancements only not to advance on a personal level. More education has merely placed more pressure on women to become what society deems the perfect wife and mother in her fancy dress, high heels and pearls will vacuuming the house and having dinner at 5. Watson wants the girls to see their own potential. Mona Lisa (Watson's nickname due to being an Art teacher) is just a few generations ahead of her time.
Rating:
Summary: Just ok
Review: This movie could have been much better developed than it was I thought. One gets the feeling that it was OVERLY edited or at least I did...I found myself always waiting for Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) to do something drastic to change things for women but it never happened..maybe the fact that she chose not to return to the school was how she chose to bring about change...I thought it was an accurate depiction of Wellseley College (Hillary Clinton's alma mater) back in the day...the actress who stands out the most in this film is Kirsten Dunst who I just adore...all in all, the movie is just ok.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good!
Review: A great movie with a great message. I enjoyed it!
Rating: 
Summary: Julia Roberts brings the gospel of feminism to Wellesley
Review: "Mona Lisa Smile" looks like it is going to be another one of those totally predictable films that I have been watching for the past couple of weeks. After all, Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) has arrived from U.C.L.A. all excited about teaching art history at Wellesley College in the fall of 1953. After all, Wellesey has the brightest women in the country (by its own admission). But as soon as she puts up the first slide in class she finds that her class is totally prepared for her. After all, Katherine is not only from California, which is certainly bad enough, she is unmarried, which is even worse. When her students recognize every single slide in her first lecture Katharine is seriously rattled, but she has a saving grace in even worse than being an unmarried first time teacher from California she happens to like modern art. Now, I was a bit worried about this film at that point because if students already know everything in the textbook then you just take the class to the next level. This is essentially what Katharine does, but it takes her a while to figure this out. Of course, modern art is not part of the proscribed curriculum, which means Katharine has just started to buck the system. Will Katharine, who came to teach tomorrow's leaders and not their wives, be able to save the minds if not the souls of her students or will the system come down on her like the wrath of outraged alumni? We have seen this before ("Dead Poet Society" is the obvious point of reference), but not with Julie Roberts and not with a cast of already established young female talent (as opposed to the traditional unknown males). Four of Katharine's students matter in different ways. Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst) is at Wellesley to become the perfect wife, just like her mother (who is a trustee), and anybody who does not fit her prim and proper model gets to be denounced in an editorial in the school paper. Anything Katharine does that Betty does not like is de facto "subversive." Joan Bradwyn (Julia Stiles) is the smartest girl in the class and would be interested in going to law school (at Yale no less) if not for the fact that she is planning on become a wife and mother. Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is the promiscuous one, at least when it comes to older men. Constance Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin) is the one who can only dream of actually having a guy pay attention to her some day. The idea is that Katharine is a proto-feminist, which is only a radical idea because apparently Wellesley educates young women for no reason. Supposedly Yale keeps one of its five spots for women open for a Wellesley graduate, but anybody who wants the place to be more than the most expensive finishing school in the country is obviously "subversive," so who would ever take advantage of it? When Katharine gets Joan to fill out the Yale application Betty is frothing at the mouth, sputtering with rage that her best friend would actually use her brain and abandon the goal of being the perfect wife. Although it makes no sense to me, Betty gets married during her senior year, disappearing for five weeks to go on her honeymoon and set up her household before returning to class to go back to butting heads with Katharine and the other girls in the group, who are obviously been inspired by the radical teacher to think independently. What redeems "Mona Lisa Smile" is that there are a couple of key moments that do not go the way that you think. At one point you are going to be thinking that a suicide is imminent, but instead there is a moment of affirmation and boldness that was a nice surprise. Then there comes the moment when Betty is about to get her comeuppance. It seems that Betty's husband might be married but does not care enough about his "perfect" wife to stay faithful to her. But just as you are all ready to enjoy Betty having her wretched life thrown back in her face, screenwriters Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal go in a different direction. Roberts has some nice moments when she makes her anger work for her, Dunst gets to be the heavy, and Goodwin shines as the young woman who discovers happiness might actually be within her grasp. Whether or not "Mona Lisa Smile" has a happy ending depends on whether you think battles or wars are what need to be won. Katharine has some relationship issues with a couple of guys, but that is just a sideshow. What matters here is what happens between the teacher and her students. Director Mike Newell's film also works because it uses art history to great effect, not only as Katharine confronts her students with examples of modern art but as they find a fitting way of having their teacher remember them and understand that she did make a difference. This is not a great film, but it is a good film at a time when there are very few of those around.
Rating: 
Summary: The Fifties - All the horror you can take in 2 hours
Review: Let's face facts - the fifties were a horribly stifling time for women and had this movie not portrayed them as so, it would have been a distortion of truth. Elite New England universities were notoriously conservative and the importance of 'clean' appearances was strictly enforced. A character such as Katharine, the rebellious art history professor would have made herself a mark for challenging the values of said establishment, no matter how beloved she was by her fellow students. The reason I gave this film only two stars was that it constantly second guessed itself. Towards the beginning of the film, Katharine refuses faculty housing because she refuses to live in a place where she cannot have male visitors. Later on, when she's rented a room somewhere else, the same restriction applies. She pushes Joan (by incorrectly assuming she would want to have both career and family) into applying for Yale and when Joan choses to get married, gets properly called out for wanting others to do as she says, not as they would. Also, when was the influence of Katharine over Betty taking place? As far as I could tell, they couldn't stand each other. Personally I think Betty was being correctly advised by Giselle, the one character who did seemed human and fallible. Even though she was intelligent and well-spoken, the fact Giselle was free thinking and sexually active almost set her up for the inevitable "slut self destructs" storyline. I'm glad they nicked that in the bud, as the scene in the dorm room after Giselle catches Betty's no-good husband Spenser in New York showed. Giselle passed up the opportunity to shatter Betty publicly to instead be a good friend to her. Had this movie possessed more moments like this, it would have been well-balanced and more enjoyable. One good thing that comes from the fifties/early sixties period movies that have been made in the past few years (Pleasantville, Far From Heaven and Down with Love) is that it finally establishes that those days are past us. They are now only fit for nicely shot movies and pretty soundtrack recordings.
Rating:
Summary: Look how far we've come!
Review: Loved it! Loved the clothing, the earrings, and appreciated how far we've come!
Rating:
Summary: Well, I Simply Loved It!
Review: I don't know why everyone is so negative in their reviews here. I thought the movie was great! I felt not only was Julia Roberts excellent as always, but Julia Stiles and Kirsten Dunst were also worthy of praise for their roles. Remember the setting is the northeast in 1953-1954. There is a little "Hollywood" over-exageration of themes, but that's Hollywood. I felt the picture painted of ivy league women's colleges of that time period was well portrayed. And I thoroughly enjoyed this film.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best, but still very good.
Review: Julia Roberts can do no wrong in my book. In this movie, it is not Julia who does wrong, but the writers and director.
The subject matter is not presented in a whole manner. It is cut up and choppy at best. You do get the idea of what is going on and supposed to be happening. But you never get the fight and the gusto that should be associated with the events. Julia and everyone elses acting is supberb. The acting is not whats in question, it is the material the are presented with. Although I did enjoy the movie, I still felt a little needy in the end. It is like I ate a big huge dinner but still was hungry afterwards. Nothing in the movie really fullfilled my wants and needs. Upon watching the movie once more with a friend, I was left wanting even more. Even after the second time around, instead of seeing more in the movie, I saw even less. Almost every time a situation was presented which would require some fight or passion, it evaporated into nothing. Julias character never really fought for what she believed and wanted. The girls characters seemed to change for no apparent reason. It is as if they knew that they needed to go from a to z but they just skipped over all the other letters to get there.
Don't get me wrong, I did like the movie, I just did not love it. I did love Julia, just not how her character worked through everything. All in all, it was just very forgettable in the end.
Rating:
Summary: JULIA ROBERTS carries the film
Review: I have to say that Julia Roberts is definitely, without a doubt, one of the most talented actresses and can carry a film not so well written with ease. Julia Roberts just steals the scene from all the other actresses who are pretty much invisible with no interesting characters portrayals. The film has a good story to it but the script was very poor and if it weren't for Julia's natural brilliant talent and her beauty, (she just radiates it with her smile, she eats the lenses), the film would not have done as decent as it did. It has a good message but just not well filmed nor thought out. Julia definitely deserves the pay she gets for lifting this movie.
Rating:
Summary: This is NOT Dead Poet's Society
Review: I'm just watched the DVD of this movie. Unless if the theater version was different, did critics and I even watch the same movie? Don't watch this expecting this to be like Dead Poet's Society. Yes, one of the messages in the movie is about thinking for yourself, but the issues that college women had to deal with during that time are quite different from prep school boys. Yes, this is somewhat of a chick flick, but at least it's not overly sappy chick flick. I don't usually have much tolerance for sap. I admit that I was not particularly happy with its portrayal of the school, as I am an alumna. But from what i have been hearing about the time period, the issues the women faced in the movie were those that they had to face then. I read somewhere that one of the reasons the story was set in Wellesley is that it's such an icon of the all women's college. (Remember Working Girl with Sigourney Weaver and Melanie Griffith?) As such, then, I'll let the exaggerations slide a little for artistic licence. Same with the different girls being somewhat exaggerated characters. It would have been nice if Joan had gone on to law school, but the fact that she at least made the application shows some progress. Sometimes change happens slowly. Maybe her daughter will go. Or maybe she went on later. We can hope. I have mixed feelings about Katherine leaving. I guess she left because under the conditions that she had to abide by, she couldn't be true to her beliefs. I don't know whether I should interpret that as the administration having won, or she's standing her ground. That is not to say she didn't make a difference, however. Yes, the change in Betty happens rather fast, but then again, given her previous beliefs, what she went through was rather traumatic. The send off the girls gave to her, with the flowers and the bike scene, shows that she did make an impression, and that they are beginning to learn what she had to say. But, as I said before, some changes happen slowly. The girls will get there eventually. I confess. I cried at the very end. But, what exactly was the purpose of the Italian professor? I think it would have been a better movie if he'd been more supportive of Katherine. Then his presence in the movie would have served a better purpose. Or, here's a thought. Wouldn't Katherine have served as a better example if she had actually married her Californian boyfriend, and showed the girls how to balance work and family? I didn't think she had all that great a reason for rejecting him. So what was his purpose in the movie? I'm thinking, though, the fact that people have talked about and written about this movie, good or bad, would suggest it struck a nerve. A movie that'll get people to think about issues isn't all bad. Based on the movie itself, with the weaknesses I pointed out, I think I'd actually give this a three and half. But since we can only give whole stars, the last bit earned it the last half star.
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