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Absolutely brilliant

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Going into it I had nothing but a sceptical mind, what to expect and the quality the film would be I had no clue, but I thought, Julia Roberts, a film about Wellesley college, surely it would fall flat? But it didn't, upon viewing I came to realise that Mona Lisa Smile was a pretty decent film truth be told. Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) was ahead of her time, a stone cold feminist who wholeheartedly disagreed with the principals and conservative, old fashioned ways Wellesley instilled into its students. They ran classes in grooming and table setting for heavens sake, Katherine thought Wellesley was a progressive, forward thinking college, well she was very wrong. Teaching art history to a class of "brainwashed" girls (brainwashed as in Wellesley had already tapped into their fragile minds), Katherine comes to understand that the girls, lead by Betty (Kirsten Dunst), cannot express themselves and can only read and memorise from a syllabus.She spends great lengths of time trying to turn the girls around, making them realise that there's more to life than being a housewife, marrying a successful suitor and raising a family, she even encourages young Joan (Julia Stiles) to go to law school, which sadly ends in failure. It struck me as odd how Katherine could portray a further 50 years of feminism and progression when the next 50 years haven't happened yet in the film (it's set in 1953-54), did Katherine know something, was she a psychic that could see into the future? Most certainly a feminist film aimed at an audience who wanted to see what feminism was like before it actually became a thing, and how one maverick woman took things into her own hands to stand up for what she believed in. Dominic West's "Bill" and the relationship with Katherine acted primarily as a side story to give further weight to the Katherine character, both Roberts and West acted brilliantly in these scenes and it was the acting prioress particularly from Roberts that kept Mona Lisa Smile ticking at a steady pace. Yes low expectations going in, but pleasantly surprised after coming out, I obviously felt like one of the Wellesley girls in the film. Definitely worth a look, there's a load of worse things you could watch.

Not the worst movie out there, If you need to pleasantly kill a couple of hours of your life.This could be a good TV show for teaches. Decent cast, decent lines, decent visual, mostly summer. Little daily life at a decent college. The students are the girls from the decent /rich/ families.The only divination from the total decentness is Maggie's Gyllenhaal young character, however mild enough if to compare with her usual roles. Vintage fashion will be a bonus for those who fancy artichoke cuts, bouffant dress and the whole era of the first bikinis (no bikini in the movie).Shame that fashion will be pretty much all you'll learn about girls education of the time, as well as the time.

It's 1953, Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts) is a California girl hired as an Art History teacher at the conservative all girls Wellesley College. The students are all from upper crust families, top academically, and aiming to get marry.There are top talented actors in this movie. The girls are Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Ginnifer Goodwin. That's some acting power. The oddest thing acting wise has to be the subdue performance of Julia Roberts. She starts off timidly which just doesn't fit her persona. Her energy is literally vibrating as she tries to squash it down. Instead of a slice of life, it feels more like a magazine article about a slice of life.Without more realism or more tension, the story just doesn't have the zip. One problem may be the fact that everything is about marriage. It is the era of the movie, but just superficially old fashion. Maybe director Mike Newell should emphasize more the pressure of the day. Instead he assumes the audience feels this automatically. He definitely needs to build up the tension. He needs more scenes like the one with Kirsten Dunst and her mother.

Julia Roberts put on a pretty good performance in this as Katherine Watson, a young art history instructor at Wellesley College in 1953. Wellesley is portrayed in the movie as a bastion of tradition - and especially of the traditional role of women, which was to be wives and mothers. Into that environment came Watson, a "modern" woman, who believed that the women she was teaching were getting an education (as she put it) to be the leaders of the future rather than to marry the leaders of the future. Watson faces opposition to her less than traditional approach to teaching - opposition from the college administration, and even opposition from her students, who for the most part do seem rather obsessed with finding the right man and getting married.It's an interesting context in which to set a movie like this. Historically, of course, this was a time of great flux in the perception of gender roles. During World War II, women had taken over many of the roles men had played, because the men were overseas fighting. With the end of the war, the men returned to their jobs, the women returned to their homes, but, "how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Paris?" Wellesley was fighting to keep them on the farm; Watson wanted to give them the freedom to stay in Paris. The tension of the movie, such as it was, was on this interplay.I suppose that was the greatest weakness I saw in this, however: the tension was limited to short spurts. There were long stretches of the movie which left me wondering what the movie really wanted to accomplish; there wasn't always a clear direction being selected and followed.It's certainly not a bad movie, and Roberts' performance was actually quite good. Overall, though, I did feel that it lacked a real sense of direction and purpose. (5/10)