Dangerous Minds

Film Review

Dangerous Minds

An intelligent adaptation of LouAnne Johnson’s book “My posse don’t do homework”, “Dangerous Minds” (1995) is a powerful and significant film directed by John N. Smith.
It stars Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson, who got a job as a substitute teacher to work with disadvantaged kids.
Obviously, it won’t be an easy task to teach this group of students, who are neither interested in English poetry nor grammatical rules.
The essential ingredients for success are here – a daring teacher, a group of students who can be considered outsiders of society and a conservative principal.
Although the plot can be considered a cliché, “Dangerous Minds” is definitely worth seeing. It is a moving film, well constructed in terms of plot. It was set in an American ghetto in the late 1990s.
LouAnne Johnson, whose only dream was to teach, was happy when she got the job as an English teacher and didn’t care about the fact that her students weren’t ordinary kids. Actually, in her first class, LouAnne finds a group of tough teenagers, who didn’t pay attention to her. At first she couldn’t stand them and left the classroom, saying that she just couldn’t teach that group of students. Another teacher advised her – she had to get those kids’ attention. To achieve this goal, “she broke the rules and changed their lives”, with new teaching strategies. She began to read some books at home and started her second class with martial arts. Although the students seemed to love it, she was told that teaching karate was against school rules.
Determined to make a difference in her students’ lives, she told them that if they wanted to pass, all they had to do was to try. Moreover, she gave them support assuring them that “at this point, each one of you has an A, all you have to do is to keep it”. This was certainly a turning point for her to earn their trust because she showed the students she believed they could succeed.
In the following classes, she brought chocolates to give them when they answered the questions correctly and played them a song from the 60s with a hidden meaning that could refer to drugs.
The role of LouAnne Johnson is brilliantly played by Michelle Pfeiffer who is really at her best. The young actors who play her students also offer us very strong and promising performances. The remarkable job of director John N. Smith can’t be overlooked. Featuring the hit “Gangsta’s Paradise”, “Dangerous Minds” has a powerful and well chosen soundtrack.
All these features contribute to pass on the message that failure shouldn’t be accepted as a way of life – there’s always another choice because “when there’s a will there’s a way”.
And did the students get LouAnne’s message? Sure. They gave her a candy begging her to stay next year and called her “the light”…