Good Will Hunting Image
Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 28 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 118 Ratings

  • Starring: Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Robin Williams
  • Summary: Will Hunting (Damon) is a brilliant mathematician, but also an angry young man. To avoid jail time, he agrees to work with Sean (Williams) a therapist who comes from the same tough Boston neighborhood.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 28
  2. Negative: 0 out of 28
  1. Intimate, heartfelt and wickedly funny, it's a movie whose impact lingers.
  2. Reviewed by: David Ansen
    80
    Gus Van Sant, working from the tangy, well-written script, gets so much humor, grit and emotional truth out of this tale that the familiar formulas behind it simply fall away.
  3. Reviewed by: John Hartl
    80
    The script also happens to be quite literate and laceratingly funny, and Damon -- no big surprise here -- turns out to be the perfect actor to deliver Will's zingers.
  4. Matt Damon and Robin Williams give touching performances, but Gus Van Sant's filmmaking is surprisingly ordinary.

See all 28 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 26 out of 33
  2. Negative: 4 out of 33
  1. Brilliant script and great direction, Good Will Hunting is a must-see movie. Amazing performance by Matt Damon. The Greatest Math Janitor Film Of All Time Expand
  2. Good Will Hunting is one of the greatest American Movies of all time. It is both Robin Williams and Matt Damon's best performances, and Robin Williams won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Good Will Hunting is both wise and deep. It really makes you stop and look at yourself and life. Expand
  3. Although the film does have a very depressing back story and the film suffers from awkward mood changes, Good Will Hunting is entertaining, emotionally rich and benefits from powerful performances from Williams, Damon, and Driver. I give this movie 71%. Expand
  4. I recently had the opportunity to see Good Will Hunting for the second time. I had not seen it since its video release in 1997. It's funny how 15 years can change your opinion about a movie. I was lukewarm to the film back then, but now 15 years wiser I see it in a new light.

    I had initially dismissed this film as a two hour study of a bunch of unlikeable and unbelievable people. But now it is evident that Matt Damon deserved his Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the title character, the good Will Hunting.

    Damon does a yeoman's job making us believe in someone who is not only a math genius with a photographic memory, but a barroom-brawler, cynic, janitor, lover, and all-around down-to-earth working-class Joe. Damon and his compadre Ben Affleck also deserved their Oscar screenplay win for creating a character more fantastic than any from the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien.

    Robin Williams also deserved his Oscar win for having us buy his interpretation of an all-knowing beard-sporting eye-glinting joke-cracking-but-no-nonsense psychologist.

    Affleck, director Gus Van Sant, and the rest of the cast merit mention as well for trying to get us to like and accept all the unappealing and implausible characters who populate this fantasy world.

    All this leads me to believe that I should revisit films like Showgirls, The River Wild, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and The Greek Tycoon. Maybe I was a little too harsh in my initial assessment of these as well.
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See all 33 User Reviews