Julianne Moore is Linda Sinclair, a devoted high school English teacher in small-town Pennsylvania. A hopeless romantic, none of the men in her life can match her very high standards. When her former star student Jason Sherwood (Michael Angarano) returns from New York City as a shell of his former self because he couldn't make it there as a playwright, Linda persuades him to produce his play at school as she deems it much too good to never be performed, but Jason's overbearing father Tom (Greg Kinnear), insists on him attending law school. Things become even more complicated when Linda and Jason, in a moment of creative craziness, fuck on her classroom desk. Then once the administration learns of this Linda is fired, only to be reinstated soon because the play looks set to give the school a big financial windfall. To direct it Linda recruits the drama teacher, Carl Kapinas (a part tailor-made for Nathan Lane), who's sick to death of directing Our Town and My Fair Lady year after year, but together they now face another dilemma: keeping the play's ending, which the administration has deemed too violent for a school production, or writing a new one, which Jason staunchly refuses to do.
This harmless yet relatable 2013 rom-com (yes, two in a week; that was not planned, I swear) certainly isn't perfect or ground-breaking, but it manages exactly what it sets out to manage: to be a balanced, restrained and charming look at education, art and relationships. Working from Dan and Stacy Chariton's script, director Craig Zisk tells this narrative with a stylistic approach that is artful and literary but never flamboyant. Moore quite honestly could've played this role in a coma but she nonetheless strives to give Linda a reserved and confident authority, with a suitably angsty yet fragile Angarano matching her in every scene. Lane is characteristically funny, too, but Kinnear has played practically the same character better before.
I think the soundtrack could've used a few indie music tracks to reflect Jason's attitude like the score reflects Linda's, and the photography is rather flat at times, but while it's no Dead Poets Society, The English Teacher is one whose class I enjoyed taking.
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