William Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a passionate classics professor at St. Benedict's Academy, an all-boys boarding school, in the 1970s. At the beginning of a new school year, his class welcomes new arrival Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch), a talented but lazy and disruptive son of national Senator Hiram Bell (Harris Yulin). Professor Hundert's efforts to academically transform Sedgewick are successful but detrimental to some of his other students, particularly the quiet and neurotic Martin Blythe (Paul Dano). However, Hundert ultimately manages to nurture and unite his class before they all compete in the school's traditional "Mr. Julius Caesar" classics quiz. Then, 25 years later, Hundert is unexpectedly overlooked for the now-vacant headmaster position, but his former students have something else planned for him.
Based on Ethan Canin's 1994 short story The Palace Thief, The Emperor's Club is harmless but unremarkable. That's because despite Kline's solid lead performance and the presence of a few newbies who've since gone on to A-list Hollywood status (there's also a young Jesse Eisenberg here), this narrative makes absolutely no effort to explore ignored avenues or to bravely throw the big emotional punches. Both of those intentions are very risky, as both can make the book/film etc. seem like it's trying too hard to be respectively unconventional or powerful. (What makes all the difference is how the director treads the chosen territory.) But trying to take either of those routes and falling into the respective traps is, I think, preferable in some ways than shying away from said routes altogether. Instead, director Michael Hoffman and screenwriter Neil Tolkin take a quite stuffy approach to this school-based coming of age flick and while I had feeling at the start that this would be emotional overkill and it turns out I was wrong there, I still wasn't engaged, moved or inspired.
Based on Ethan Canin's 1994 short story The Palace Thief, The Emperor's Club is harmless but unremarkable. That's because despite Kline's solid lead performance and the presence of a few newbies who've since gone on to A-list Hollywood status (there's also a young Jesse Eisenberg here), this narrative makes absolutely no effort to explore ignored avenues or to bravely throw the big emotional punches. Both of those intentions are very risky, as both can make the book/film etc. seem like it's trying too hard to be respectively unconventional or powerful. (What makes all the difference is how the director treads the chosen territory.) But trying to take either of those routes and falling into the respective traps is, I think, preferable in some ways than shying away from said routes altogether. Instead, director Michael Hoffman and screenwriter Neil Tolkin take a quite stuffy approach to this school-based coming of age flick and while I had feeling at the start that this would be emotional overkill and it turns out I was wrong there, I still wasn't engaged, moved or inspired.
It's nowhere near as awful as Mr. Holland's Opus (that was emotional overkill), but The Emperor's Club is also nowhere near as great or distinctive or groundbreaking as Dead Poets Society, Heathers or The Breakfast Club. 6/10.
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