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History Boys, The
EMAILPRINTFox Searchlight Pictures
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 32 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 46 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Comedy | Drama
Written by: Alan Bennett (also play)
Directed by: Nicholas Hytner
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 21, 2006
DVD: April 17, 2007
Running Time: 109 minutes, Color
Origin: UK
Summary
RATING: R for language and sexual content
Starring Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Stephen Campbell Moore, Clive Merrison, Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Samuel Anderson, and James Corden
The History Boys tells the story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. (Fox Searchlight)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Center Stage The Object of My Affection
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
In The History Boys, as in all of Bennett's work, irony is what the characters live and breathe - and I mean irony in its truest sense, of using language to present opposite and often sly alternatives to accepted wisdom.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
History Boys boasts a dazzling verbal cleverness--the gleeful rat-a-tat of snappy banter expertly executed--that doesn't keep it from also being deeply, exquisitely sad.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
If the literacy of The History Boys is deemed uncinematic, then give me uncinema anytime.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Peter Marks
Wildean panache of this caliber is not the norm in movie dialogue, so on this score alone, The History Boys is a blessing. The top-drawer work of a fine ensemble is another.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The screen, like the stage, can barely contain this marvelous play of intelligence.
Village Voice Scott Foundas
The film version of The History Boys is a lesser thing, more fixed in space and time and rendered almost unbearably "cinematic" in patches by Hytner's gymnastic camerawork. Yet the ideas and feelings of the piece remain so rich that it almost doesn't matter.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
The movie is brilliant and infectious, much like Bennett's voice: English-deadpan but never snide, and generous to a fault.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Revved by the stage performances, the cast courses through the material with disciplined exuberance--especially the eight young actors at the center of the drama, many of whom have never appeared in a film before.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Stephen Holden
The current of intellectual energy snapping through the ferociously engaging screen adaptation of Alan Bennett’s Tony Award-winning play feels like electrical brain stimulation.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Toddy Burton
Clearly, the filmmakers did manage to capture some measure of lightning in a bottle.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
As you can reliably expect of a work by Alan Bennett, The History Boys is bubbly, witty, sneaky-smart entertainment with the additional virtues of heart and cunning.
Read Full Review >Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman
Though all but two students look too old, their interpretations are unanimously fine.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
The History Boys is as much about the meaning and value of reading and learning as it is about the ho-humness of genital fondling by sir with love.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
The film can't hide its stage origins, and in cutting almost an hour on the journey from stage to screen some resonance is lost. But Bennett's dialogue sparkles and skewers with killer wit. Dig in.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The History Boys is an erudite, sharply written film with consummate performances, but its origins on the stage are all too obvious.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen
This is a piece engineered to run on the high octane of clever dialogue. It's chatty, it's wordy, but a passion for the well-written word lies at the thematic heart of the thing, and cinematic flourishes would only clog the arteries. Purists can rest assured -- there's no clogging.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The film is worth seeing, if you have any fondness for the writer who co-created "Beyond the Fringe" and who is second only to Stoppard in his sprightly but mellow wit.
Read Full Review >Premiere Glenn Kenny
There's no one today writing English dialogue as sharp as Bennett's, and hearing it delivered expertly is a pleasure worth sitting through some dodgy montages for.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano
A lively and entertaining disquisition on the purpose and uses of knowledge in a world that cares less about scholarship than quantifiable results.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
If you liked the play and the compelling ideas Bennett kicks around, the movie makes for an intellectually invigorating couple of hours.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
The material has crackle, but its vibrancy feels far off and muted, like a fireworks display going off in a neighboring town.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
An excellent British drama adapted by Alan Bennett (The Madness of King George) from his celebrated play.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
At the last, despite the modern touches in Bennett's screenplay, The History Boys fills the traditional bill. Wellington would probably not be too upset by it. Eventually it tells us that Waterloo is still in pretty good hands.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
A funny thing happened to The History Boys on the way to the screen. The players are the same, the dialogue is pretty much identical, but the vibrancy of the play -- its exhilarating immediacy -- has been muted.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
The play's most acclaimed performance - rotund Richard Griffiths as the closeted teacher Hector - is great in the movie, too.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Now seen for the first time in close-up, these "boys" are well past adolescence, which makes Bennett's sympathy for poor Hector a bit easier to take.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Though it preserves the terrific lead performance of Richard Griffiths - best known to film audiences as Harry Potter's evil stepfather - The History Boys is essentially filmed theater, with minimal, and usually clumsy, attempts to take the action out of the classroom.
Read Full Review >Variety Leslie Felperin
Audiences coming cold to this largely faithful adaptation of Alan Bennett's clever but contrived classroom comedy won't be so wowed, given picture's irrevocably stagy feel. Nicholas Hytner's flat-footed direction doesn't help, nor do picture's younger cast members' over-rehearsed performances, although the seasoned thesps shine.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Somewhere in the translation from stage to screen, The History Boys has become an intelligent misfire. What's left is a literate but listless film.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
With the original stage cast, the film is doggedly faithful to the play but has failed to translate it into much of a film.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 46 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mark W. gave it an8:
Almost turned it off after the first 15 minutes but it really grew on me.
M B. gave it a9:
A sadly misunderstood film that aims to teach about the value of knowledge in itself, as opposed to the growing modern emphasis on grades and exams. Seeing this through the experiences of the teenagers also gives insight into the many issues most young schoolboys will run into in their lives, and immediately makes them easily identifiable characters. Personally I did not feel their performance was lessened any by their age (go complain about Daniel Radcliffe being too old for harry potter if you want-I'd like to see you try to find an acceptable replacement that would not be abhorred by the fans!) and felt that the original actors from the play were very effective - so effective in fact that once I stopped consciously focusing on their age, I forgot the issue entirely! The exploration of homosexuality is another theme the majority of schoolboys will come across, however little they may admit it, and i felt this film explored the issue well. There is a trend for Hector to be labeled a pedarist when the point was that the boys themselves allowed this to happen as an act of sympathy towards a suppressed man who had very few real pleasures in life. This man is in fact more admirable than anything else, as it is this man, who upon such a short description would appear as a corrupt, lecherous character, who teaches them the real value of learning and knowledge. The various teachers embody different aspects of learning too, and i especially noted the headmaster, more concerned with the grades students get than the students themselves, a trend sadly more common these days. All in all, I feel this film has been too harshly slated by those who only see what is on the surface, and ignore what the film is actually trying to say.
Vlad D. gave it a2:
This film was abysmal. It does not establish any sort of emotional connection between the viewer and any of the characters. The end should have made more of an impact, but instead, I remained completely apathetic throughout. The film, though it tries hard, is nothing but a string of loosely connected, or often, completely unrelated events (and extremely long, wordy, irrelevant quotations) culminating in an uneventful, predictable and overall boring conclusion. A scene that stands out in my mind as particularly terrible is when Dakin approaches Irwin, his teacher, about his desire for Irwin to "suck him off" at a future date, to which Irwin cancels his prior engagements and consents. This scene did nothing other than suggesting that every single character in this film is homosexual. To what end? Are we discussing the acceptance of homosexuals into society, or exploring the gradual process of a man examining himself and realizing he is homosexual, or even observing a budding "forbidden" relationship between student and teacher? No. This scene is entirely irrelevant, comes completely out of left field and has no bearing on any of the other events of the story. This 109 minute movie felt like four hours of the same four dull scenes looping over and over and over. Don't bother picking this up.
Mr. E gave it a9:
I had fun watching this film, despite my unfamiliarity with the play itself. The cast shone in each of their respective characters. A great story addressing some themes rarely combined for adolescents; coming of age, homosexuality, right and wrong... I know what I'll be talking about in my classes Monday morning.
Shannon P. gave it a7:
The dialog is entertaining, and not overly literary as some reviews suggest. The main flaw in the film is that the actors are too old to be playing even the oldest high school students, and the things they do and say are likewise more what you would expect from young men in their 20's. I suspect this was largely based on the writer(s)' college experience, grafted onto a high school setting. It almost works, and is worth watching despite this flaw. While this is hardly a "pro-homosexual" or "pro-pedophile" movie, it addresses these issues in a more complete and realistic context than is usually the case.
N K gave it a9:
Just saw same on video and just felt some of the criticisms of the film need correcting. first, the film does not state that the teacher's rather pathetic gropings are ok. neither is everyone ok with it. indeed, the teacher's best friend, the woman teacher is rather saddened to learn of it. and he is about to be fired for same. that said, the boys are 18 not 17 as the voice-over in the extra features makes clear. this extra term in preparing for university was abolished in the early 80s, and it was set before then. the boys find it all rather boring; they have bigger concerns. if one can look beyond the sex and longing and sadness, this is a fascinating discussion about what makes for the best teaching: facts, argument, or interest. but, as the comments suggest, few look past the sex. great acting, too.
D H. gave it a0:
This film was a severe disappointment. Critics raved, and I sat through what was perhaps the worst movie of all time. The first thing that bothered me was that the film was not even funny, nor was it witty (after trying so hard to be). The second thing that made this movie intolerable was the pederastric relationships between a male teacher and his boy students. This fat instructor was praised for his teaching even though he thought it was acceptable to fondle his boy students. And the worst thing about it was everyone in the school knew about it and turned the cheek. Also, there was another male teacher who had a seemingly pleasing relationship with a boy student. Take this movie off the shelves, it is not worth the space.
