The cartoon notions of the '50s and snooty Easterners say more about Hollywood cluelessness than about the period the film condescends to...lacking the courage of its own vulgarity, Mona Lisa Smile is as tepid as old bathwater.

| Mar 12, 2018

Just what we need: a pyjama party posing as a movie.

| Dec 20, 2017

Glossy entertainment value but far from art.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2010

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 7, 2005

Devoid of enjoyment, intelligence or interest.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jan 27, 2004

Roberts asks her students rhetorical questions: What makes art good or bad? Who decides? But the movie answers them as canonically as the syllabus Roberts abandons.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jan 10, 2004

Unfortunately, despite some winning performances, nothing happens we haven't seen before, the movie stuck with a script more moribund than a bran muffin at an Atkins Convention.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 24, 2003

Women of the Fifties, rise up in protest.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 23, 2003

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 21, 2003

In terms of the gap between the movie it's trying to be and the movie it actually is, Mona Lisa Smile is in many ways indefensible. Yet for all its problems, it's satisfyingly movielike.

Full Review | Dec 20, 2003

The movie has a paint-by-numbers script and little more to offer than pretty images. The result is glossy entertainment value but a long way from art.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Dec 19, 2003

Anyone who's ever been moved by a teacher to dream a slightly bigger dream than his parents thought he or she was capable of achieving ought to love the film, for it gets at a truer model of teacher's inspiration.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2003

Like the turtleneck cashmere sweaters and girdles that tie down these promising women, the movie is trite and trussed.

Full Review | Dec 19, 2003

Rather than being a fascinating exploration of a much more constrained time in our social history, the film simply feels anachronistic.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 19, 2003

[Roberts] is an anachronistic pop-feminist on a mission.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 19, 2003

There seems to be an odd idealization, or trivialization, of the characters that makes the movie ultimately unsatisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 19, 2003

It's hard to believe Katherine could become a beloved teacher or inspire her students, and in the case of Mona Lisa Smile that's the same as saying it's hard to believe the movie.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 19, 2003

When was the last time you saw a mainstream movie with big, flashy stars that featured a fairly sophisticated discussion of the nature of art?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 19, 2003

Sanctimonious, relentlessly predictable and willfully ignorant of the period it's set in.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 19, 2003