Dear god, I want to punch the person who wrote this play and strangle the producers who made it into a movie. Perhaps like you, I was drawn in by the promise of an intellectual, thought-provoking story built around 2 unconventional teachers and their differing historical & literary views of the world. Instead it's about 2 teachers and a headmaster groping, sucking and molesting their students ...and being glorified for it.
Barely covered by a light dusting of seemingly profound yet essentially vapid dialogue, I realized midway that, much like a Woody Allen movie, "The History Boys" is little more than the writer's attempt to justify his own feelings of paedophilia by portraying a "harmless" old man having a romp with youngsters.
Yes, there are a lot of big words thrown around, a lot of fancy name-dropping and literary quotations, but I have to agree with several other reviewers that it's all just a smokescreen, and if you are truly familiar with these authors and works you'll be sitting there wondering if it's all just sound & fury signifying nothing. (See what I did there? I threw in my own literary quotation so I could sound intellectual like.)
For starters, the theme of "the subjunctive tense" is repeatedly brought up, making a point that it refers to possibilities unrealized. Fine. But notice how several times in the script, characters (educated teachers, no less) fail to use the subjunctive tense when called for. It should be "If I *were* more like Hector..." NOT "If I *was* more like Hector..."
That's a trivial example, but it shows what I'm talking about. The script is poorly written, and despite all the supercilious lingo, those of you who are moderately in-the-know will smell a rat.
The supposed conflict of the story--the 2 different teaching styles and thus 2 different perspectives of looking at history--is so inconsistently presented that we're left wondering which teacher was supposed to be saying what. No matter, they both like to ogle, grope and suck young boys so it all ends up the same.
And that's by far my biggest gripe with the film. Here we have a 60-year-old high school teacher who takes turns fondling the genitalia of the boys in his class, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him when he's caught? The boys all seem to laugh it off, if not encourage it, and the story continues to devolve into asking "when is it OK to have an inappropriate sexual encounter with your 17-year-old student?" Their answer: when you don't get caught!
Sweet fancy Moses, I was better off watching that Woody Allen flick "Whatever Works" about a 60-year-old man snogging an 18-year-old girl, because at least she was legal!
Another thing, all moralizing aside, every character in this film is so thoroughly cocky, pretentious and unlikeable (except for maybe the new teacher) that you find yourself hoping they all get raped, every last one. Haha OK that was a bit harsh, but jeez I sure would like to line up all the boys and give them a big Three Stooges slap across their faces. Smack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack.
If you're looking for a good coming-of-age period piece, skip this movie and see "Dead Poets Society", "Biloxi Blues", or a cute Canadian gem called "New Waterford Girl".
21 out of 33 found this helpful