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Amazon.co.uk Review
An earnest and sometimes overblown story of a music teacher's impact on those around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is at times a genuinely touching drama in the vein of It's a Wonderful Life. Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) plays an aspiring composer and musician who takes a job teaching music at a local high school to earn money while he composes. But when his wife (Glenne Headley) becomes pregnant, Glenn Holland must put aside his dreams and address the everyday realities of his life, from the melancholy and sometimes tragic fates of his students to the discovery that the son he cherishes is deaf. Building to a highly emotional climax in which the teacher sees the impact he's had on the world around him, Mr. Holland's Opus is a showcase for a fine Oscar-nominated performance by Dreyfuss and an engaging, heartwarming story. --Robert Lane
Special Features
English
Region 2
Region 2
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
A little known feel good movie that makes you feel all warm and tingley (but not sick to your stomach).
Mister Holland's Opus follows the life of an aspiring composer who finds himself teaching high school to pay the bills before his first composition obviously makes him famous. However, as the years go by and his finished composition seems farther away, he manages to inadvertantly touch, inspire, change and mould many of the students that attend his classes.
Think Dead Poets Society without the tragedy.
Truely a little known gem.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
The blasé will say that this is one more film on the life and retirement of a good teacher. One more and nothing else. They would be slightly wrong. This film is a lot more interesting and profound than that. First of all it becomes personal and poignant when his own son is discovered to be 90% deaf at birth. For a musician and music teacher tbis is a tragic blow, even if Beethoven became deaf in his life. Then it shows that a good teacher is not supposed to caress the students in the smooth way of things, but he has to be both exacting and demanding on one side and on the other side helpful in the effort the students have to do to eventually come to the pleasure of becoming able to play beautiful music. And it takes a tremendous effort on the teacher’s part to be that inspiring and ruthless guide who will teach rhythm and drumplaying to a black man who will die in Vietnam, sentiment and clarinet playing to the only daughter of a family who has no creative dimension, emotion and how to sing with her heart to a girl who would like to take her music teacher along with her to New York. But furthermore the film is also a vast trip from the sixties to the nineties, from Kennedy to – the unnamed – Clinton, with the Vietnam war at the back, Hair, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Nixon resigning, Ford falling when walking down from a plane, Reagan and his famous Hollywood smile, and of course the severe cuts in education in the mid-nineties that led to dropping all artistic activities from the curriculum of the school. And we could go on and on with levels of meaning that avoid mish-mash sentimentalism. And yet the end is kind of too much. How can we imagine the school, the principal and the whole community who have rejected the man at sixty without more ado than for an insignificant incident come together to unanimously present him with a farewell present that should have asked months of secret preparation ? And that present means that this Mr Holland has sacrificed all his personal and musical potential for the sake of teaching music to kids, including his composing and his musical inspiration. This leads to the saddest fact of all : education is based on a frustrating dédication from the teachers. A dedication that verges onto sacrifice, of one’s own life and of one’s family’s life, and a frustration that stifles in the teacher what is his deepest and most insanely creative inspiration, which delivers him to retirement a hollow shell with an uncatchable ghost of a dead ambition. This film is thus very painful : as long as our school system will demand such sacrifices from its teachers it will lead to a deeply boring and frustrating education that will leave young people naked and unarmed in front of life when the real hardships of history come, and they always come back over and over again.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, Université Paris Dauphine, Université Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Richard Dreyfuss never ceases to amaze me with how versatile he is. In 'Mr Holland's Opus' he portrays the fine quality of one of America's best actors. The movie reaches deep into your emotions. Finding those most sensitive feelings. The relationships between his family and his dream is finely balanced that it makes one experience his frustration as though it was ours. The movie is filled with joy, heatbreak laughter and tears. For me it was one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen. Jean Louisa Kelly has only a small part. However she portrays her excellent talent to the full. I would love to see her starring in a modern musical. This girl has so much carisma that she melts your heart. One to buy and keep, so you can watch it over and over.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
a life story
God how I cried, I also got angry, it brought out so many emotions it hard to say which bit I liked best, a very good film tracking a music teachers life, the high's and the low's... Read more
Published 24 months ago by Linda Rose Evans
Life's what happens while you're busy making other plans
I saw this at the cinema in 1996, and I really enjoyed watching it over again when I got the DVD. This is a wonderful movie that has several important messages about life that -... Read more
Published on 23 May 2010 by Hakon Soreide
Purchase of Video
The item I ordered was dispatched very quickly was received in mint condition I was delighted with the service.
Published on 28 Feb 2010 by yogi bear
Wonderful and heart warming, a must for any undervalued teacher
This is the third copy of this film I've bought as all my other ones have disappeared into the void that are my friends collections. Read more
Published on 22 Feb 2010 by Mark Smith
Mr Holland's Opus.
Richard Dreyfuss plays a music teacher sruggling to make ends meet. This film is like a modern day, American "Mr Chips". Great film.
Published on 29 Jun 2009 by J. P. Woodhead
a great peice of work!!
A truly amazing entertaining film for all the family. A chronology of social history told through the changing trends of music. Magical!
Published on 2 May 2009 by Mrsn L. Pine-coffin
Mr. Holland's Opus
More 'cheese' than a deli counter (!), but a truly uplifting film. There are some cringe moments and yet I couldn't help but love this film. Mr. Read more
Published on 30 April 2009 by Jessica Goldfinch
mr chip's type movie
This is a movie for any tear jerker fan's. A true classic film both heartwarming and deeply emotional. Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2009 by Mrs. L. Shone
Subtitles
I agree with other review, but one think is missing about this product: it has 4 subtitles.
English hard of hearing
French
Ungarian
Turkish
English hard of hearing
French
Ungarian
Turkish
Published on 10 Oct 2008 by Ruggia Giuseppe
Words cant easily describe
this is one of those films that after watching everything else in your dvd collection or at the cinema, you wish you had watched this 1 first. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2007 by Mr. J. Mc Adam
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