You'll be embarrassed, sad, happy then exhausted.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 27, 2007

Has its inspiring moments - especially given the true story - and some tense, dramatic scenes amid the speedy montages of confusing gang action.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 27, 2007

Despite solid work from the engaging cast, there's nothing new here to distinguish Freedom Writers as anything beyond a C+.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 27, 2007

| Original Score: 1/6 | Feb 3, 2007

Engaging but clichd inspirational drama set during the time of the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles. On some level, just about any movie featuring never-say-die teachers is effective.

| Original Score: B | Jan 11, 2007

Square, sincere, and proud of it.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 10, 2007

Our eager-beaver heroine suffers the kids' sarcasm, fails to earn their respect by bringing in a Tupac tape, then wins them over in a crucial scene that, fact-based or not, rings as false as anything in Dangerous Minds.

Full Review | Jan 9, 2007

Corny? You bet. And worse when the plot veers into the glitz of a Dangerous Minds and the sappiness of a 온라인카지노추천 After School Special. But the movie, which Swank helped produce by using her clout as a two-time Oscar winner, gets to you.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 9, 2007

Freedom Writers is another exceptional teacher scenario not so different from the norm.

| Jan 6, 2007

Thanks to LaGravenese's empathetic writing and direction, and Swank's titanic force of will, Freedom Writers' unabashed earnestness proves unexpectedly powerful.

| Original Score: B | Jan 5, 2007

It's not a great movie, but at-risk teens could do a lot worse.

| Original Score: B | Jan 5, 2007

Freedom Writers confounds its own claims to veracity by coming across as a veritable textbook in itself -- a textbook of earnest, liberal, white-woman-in-the-blackboard jungle clichs.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2007

It's a truly inspiring story; pity the movie doesn't live up to it.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2007

At a time when New Year's resolutions to change already are falling by the wayside, you can't help but be moved by a group of young people who followed through on their resolve.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2007

One teacher can make a difference in a troubled student's life. I learned this from To Sir, with Love, Dangerous Minds and Van Halen's Hot for Teacher video.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 5, 2007

By using the voices of the students; their words, their tones, their highs, their lows; the film takes on a gut-punching immediacy that's more than a bit startling.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2007

An educational fantasy that happens to be mostly true.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2007

This film fails to earn what Erin Gruwell earned in real life: credibility.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 5, 2007

Freedom Writers is a tribute to individualism wrapped in the most conformist of packages, one of those pictures where the message of the tale is flatly contradicted by the manner of the telling.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 5, 2007

There's a straight-ahead spirit to Freedom Writers that lifts it above its too-many peers in the 'troubled youth' category of films.

| Original Score: B | Jan 5, 2007