The History Boys

The History Boys

The History Boys

The History Boys

I was very disappointed with this film, and surprised that it had received such wonderful reviews. Can't anybody see that it doesn't make sense? I was 16 in 1983 and remember what school was like in the UK at that time. Nobody was openly gay. Most friends of mine at 17/18 were desperately trying to lose their virginity - with a girl. The few who later turned out to be gay probably started their sex lives as bit later, at university. At school it was all a bit hysterical. Teachers suspected of fondling were subject to whispering campaigns and were ostracized and hounded. Why would the one boy who has managed to get somewhere with a girl be the one to offer a male teacher sex? Why wouldn't any of his friends be the least bit surprised or worried about this behaviour? Since when did kids in 1983 call someone a "*"? Is the audience meant to accept that non oxbridge universities like Bristol and Newcastle (both excellent universities!) were ever second rate? Maybe to a snob like Bennett, but who cares? Why would an entire history class be the only ones good enough to apply for oxbridge? none of it rings true. The only sympathetic character is Rudge, and his character is also involved in the only piece of truth in the whole shoddy exercise - he gets into Oxbridge because somebody knew his father. In real life the others just wouldn't have got in - certainly not the whole class. But Bennett doesn't make us care anyway - he's too busy with his odd thesis for that - but don't ask me what the thesis is because that's not clear either. There's much more. The use of Griffiths just makes one remember his superb performance as a scary queer uncle in Withnail and I - a far superior film in which there is tension and emotion, and characters you love (Withnail, I and Uncle Monty are all believable, comic and fully rounded) none of which are on display here. We just don't care when he dies, and we don't care what happens to the kids, as told in the final scene, because the script doesn't go into who they really are, or what they want. The hook - getting into oxbridge - doesn't seem to really concern them at any point in the film, so it fails as a tension provider. The real theme (everyone's gay) is very ambiguous and never really comes out to say what it thinks about itself (the * never even happens - why not? Did Bennett chicken out?). The fact is, just as Rudge got into Oxford because of his dad, Bennett got the film made because he's a luvvy, with a troupe of backslappers telling him every word he writes is as clever as hell. It has to be so, otherwise this tosh would never have made the screen. The next night I watched "The Last King of Scotland". What a film! What performances! What a contrast with this limp piece of self indulgence!

NAMBIA, the Man-Boy Sex Group, is well served by this disgraceful movie. Do not be deceived by the spin that says this movie will take you back to your school days ---- unless you were one of the kids that endured sex abuse from their homosexual teacher. Classroom banter is the thin icing on the cake, as a supposedly lovable old codger gropes the boys at will, and is played-off as a sweet hero, while the school principle who tries to stop it is portrayed as a narrow-minded nuisance. Lest anyone miss the point, there is another gay teacher who thinks his homosexual activities belong strictly off campus; this teacher is severely mocked. At a time when the Catholic Church has been sued for millions and has lost much of its moral credibility because of exactly this kind of illegal and immoral abuse, here comes a film that advocates it. If you saw the play DOUBT, this is the opposite.

This movie is total disaster. Here we have a gay male teacher who molestes the boys and yet nobody seems to care, in fact most of the boys volunteer to ride on his motorcycle so they can then be molested. The movie claims to be a comedy, so are we suppost to find the molestation funny ? I don't. Then near the end of the movie it goes into the future and one of the Grammar schools gay students is now a teacher and he admits he has trouble not molesting boys. This movies pushes gay rights and male teachers back twenty years and gives the impression that gays are a danger to boys. I cant help but wonder if the creator of this movie is a religious fundamentalist who hates gays. Totally sick movie.

I found this an utterly appalling movie in so many ways. First of all - the premise of the movie is false - its not about growing up in an English public school in the 1980s because none of the school boys behave anything other than sock puppets of Alan Bennett - The boys dance in their underwear quoting poetry, sing vaudeville songs and practically encourage their beloved fat gay teacher to molest them on a regular basis with some reluctance. Does this strike you as the behavior of normal English school boys or the warped fantasy of a pervert? Second, I find it absolutely bemusing that so many reviewers choose to ignore the homosexual pedophilia aspect of this film. Why are reviewers not disgusted when the fat sleaze bag of teacher gropes the genitals of the school boys?? Please do not consider this a spoiler since the scene was replayed in the trailers for the film. Third - I find it puzzling that the main characters who are shocked by his abhorrent behavior are cast as the chief villains. Fourth - the amount of dialogue devoted to History teaching is about as scant as a fig leaf. Worse, its also absurd as the new teacher instructs the boys to give a cynical and glowing report on the activities of Stalin and Hitler, two of the greatest mass murderers in human history. Look if Bennett wants to produce his own gay fantasy film where teenage school boys want to have sex with their male schoolteachers - fine - but put it in the adult section together with the other X-rated films - the ones showing * stars playing the characters of schoolgirls. But trying to claim that this film is an authentic account of school life in the 1980s is absolutely absurd.

Lashings of literary quotations, francophone banter and one-liners atop a dialog based on epithets probably give it artistic merit to some minds and if you are a gay and/or terminally jaundiced and world-weary teacher it may well have some meaning for you. For the other 99.9% of humanity, this is a thinly-disguised rose-colored vanguard for destigmatising man-boy love and as such is odious and disingenuous. We all know that teenage boys are obsessed with sex but to suggest that so many are actively homo/bi/curious is just wishful thinking on someone's part. The preoccupation with sex on the part of the adults as well gives greater insight into the writer and directors' minds as epitomized in a scene where one of the boys on being rebuffed by a gay teacher gives some tart comment to the effect that "you are really daring when it comes to talking and thinking but something real happens, you get all cautious"(paraphrased). So, in this film, sex (specifically gay sex) is more 'real' than all the puffery about the value of education that it otherwise pontificates on. A curious perspective but one I am very glad to not share. To add tedium to odium, it is also badly made. Star turns by the three adult leads were the only thing that kept me seated but were not enough to rescue this turkey. There are numerous technical flaws as noted elsewhere, the contrived ending is cringingly gauche and the headmaster character races past cliché and pythonesque parody in his caricature to become a sad commentary on pro-gay prejudice in film-making. This is one of two films in the past five years that have made me want to walk out. Since this one actually irritated me enough to write and warn people off it; it now stands in my humble opinion as the worst film I have seen this century.

Plot: A group of Yorkshire schoolboys in 1983 try to get into Oxbridge. Alan Bennett is a celebrated playwright who has written for the screen several times. However on previous occasions he was telling a story, whilst in this instance he is trying to preach. He wants to pass on his knowledge. To tell us of the value of education, of knowledge for the sake of knowledge, of constantly striving to extend one's appreciation and understanding of high culture. It doesn't work. Because Bennett started out as a working class Yorkshire lad this film is set in Yorkshire, in 1985, despite the complete absence of Yorkshire mannerisms, patterns of speech and period attitudes. Because Bennett went to Oxford University (which, like so many others, he has never gotten over) the characters all indulge in constant, faux-witty, intellectual wordplay rather than conversations. It is difficult to escape the belief that Bennett, rather than characterising them, instead uses them like puppets to show the audience how clever he is (every character, in effect, sounds like Alan Bennett). The result is deeply annoying. Furthermore because Bennett is gay the schoolboys are all deeply homophile and there is plenty of what can only be described as homosexual letching over young, fresh boys. One teacher, Richard Griffiths in full charm mode, is a serial groper of his pupils whilst another teacher, in a revolting scene, is propositioned, quite out of the blue and out of character, by one of his pupils. And as Bennett is both homosexual and an intellectual we get villains like the grasping headmaster obsessed only by league tables and the moronic PE teacher who is also an overbearing Christian (and therefore anti-homosexual). Both are, at best, shallow stereotypes. To win praise with the chattering classes there is a scene conducted entirely and pointlessly in French. Bennett, like an unruly child, seems determined to shout, "Look at me! Aren't I clever?" at the audience. There are other flaws. The cinematography is beyond dull, the pacing non-existent, many characters have strikingly little to do and for a film about the value of knowledge there is a surprisingly ignorant section on the First World War that happily repeats falsehoods that were disproved decades ago. The ending meanwhile is deeply unsatisfying. The serial groper dies, cue melodrama, whilst all the boys get into Oxford, cue collapse of what little drama remained. In conclusion: pretentious tosh for metropolitan boobies.

This play and movie completely hoodwinked the critics and public. This is one of the most overrated pieces of garbage to receive such recognition in many years. I found the play appallingly empty and driven by the titillation of sexy young men prancing in undies and a trivialization of sexual molestation to give the whole experience "sophistication." This ranks with The Children's Hour as one of the most disgusting exploitations of homosexuality. Alan Bennett wants us to be aroused and shocked at the plot revelations. However, no one else appears to be shocked except for the headmaster. All the other characters take the teacher's molestations as a coming of age initiation. So if it's no big deal then what's the point of this story? The entire plot resurrects material ranging from Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Browning Version, Butley, and Our Miss Brooks, throws it in a food processor and serves it with new and sexy napkins. The "debates" are drivel that are made to appear substantive. If you know what they are discussing you will realize it's all about nothing.