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| Warner Bros. | Release Date: March 3, 1989 |
Starring:
Alan North, Beverly Todd, Ethan Phillips, Lynne Thigpen, Michael Beach, Morgan Freeman, Robert Guillaume, Robin Bartlett, Sandra Reaves-Phillips, Sloane Shelton
Summary:
The dedicated but tyrannical Joe Clark is appointed the principal of a decaying inner-city school and he is determined to improve by any and all means.
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Audiences are apt to root for the film's Mr. Clark even when they aren't entirely enthusiastic about what he's doing. Much of this is attributable to Mr. Freeman's fiery and compelling performance, but a lot of it also comes from the director John G. Avildsen (''Rocky''), who has stacked the deck in every way he can.
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Morgan Freeman's inspired performance as Joe Clark, the New Jersey principal who uses controversial methods to clean up a drug- and crime-ridden high school, makes it easier to forgive John Avildsen's rather glossy and simplistic treatment of a serious dilemma in the public school system.
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Like most simplifications, Lean On Me's genially despotic approach has
its attractions, and it works fine as a movie. Simplification worked fine
in Rocky and in The Karate Kid, too, but unlike those essentially simple
films, Lean On Me oversimplifies a very complex issue. And unlike those
films, Lean On Me leaves one pondering the fact that, in real life, things
aren't ever simple. [9 March 1989]
Lean on Me wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants.
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Lean on Me is surprisingly subdued (and very coolly photographed, too, by Victor Hammer). It may be that Avildsen was feeling disciplined - Clark's influence, perhaps. And, then, school board politics and students' testing skills aren't exactly juicy dramatic themes. [3 March 1989, p.4D]
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