Over at Entertainment Weekly’s PopWatch a few weeks ago, they “reviewed the reviews” of Freedom Writers. I really want to see this movie.
Some backstory. A few years ago, I took a job in public relations at a nonprofit agency in WNY. For the most part, I hated this job. I won’t get into why. But while I worked there, I got to do a few really, really cool things. One of those things was meeting Erin Gruwell, the teacher behind the Freedom Writers Diary.
Ms. Gruwell, and several of her students, signed my copy of the book. And even though I could never accomplish the things she accomplished, meeting her and reading this book was a large part of what inspired me to become a teacher. So I found snippets of reviews like this completely annoying:
“And not that she needed a crack habit, but Erin herself is so unbelievably saintly—and her fellow teachers so snivelingly evil—that she’s impossible to believe as anything more than an inspiration-bot. Every student is fundamentally good and easily taught and reformed, and the eventual triumph of the human spirit is so predetermined that it’s not particularly satisfying. The music swells, the tears well up, Swank smiles lovingly, and the crack pipe starts to look rather appealing.”
Hm. Mr. Josh Bell of Las Vegas Weekly seems to completely ignore the fact that Erin Gruwell is an actual person. I don’t know how true-to-life (or to the book) Freedom Writers is, but, well, this just seems like an utterly ridiculous thing to say. Erin Gruwell’s story is one that seems made-for-Hollywood, too good to be true. But the thing is, it IS true.
I hope this movie does well. I hope millions and millions of people see it, educators especially, and are inspired to change the world in both large and small ways.
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