The History Boys reviews (2006)

The History Boys details

Format:	15 DVD
Starring:	Jack Bagley, Samuel Anderson, Richard Griffiths, Samuel Barnett, Clive Merrison, Stephen Campbell Moore, Frances De La Tour, Penelope Wilton
Director:	Nicholas Hytner
Genre:	Drama - Comedy, Romantic
Studio:	20TH CENTURY FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Collections:	Top 400 All-Time Rentals

DVD 1 disc

Name	Discs
The History Boys	15 Feature

DVD Information

Run time:	1 hour 40 minutes
Rental release:	05 Mar 2007
Main languages:	English, English Audio Description

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Most helpful review The History Boys

Diabolical

By a customer from London , 30 May 2007

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[Highly rated reviewer]

Beware – this is no Dead Poet’s Society as the trailers suggest! It’s a poorly written adaptation with completely unrealistic, 1-dimensional characters. Even worse – the hero is a self-proclaimed paedophile and your meant to feel sorry for him throughout out the film!!! The constant and bizarre homosexual references are extremely disturbing if not downright inappropriate. What boy asks his teachers if they want blowjobs in return for getting him into Oxford??? (This wasn't a joke. Insanely, this is meant to be a poignant scene!) It even ends with a gay student growing up to become a teacher yet fully admitting he is attracted to his students! I am extremely liberal-minded with plenty of gay friends, but I think this film crossed the line in many places – it would have been vaguely excusable if it had been well executed. But it wasn’t - it’s horrendous. Avoid at all costs.
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Cheerful revision(ism)

By MarkSW18 (12 reviews) , 17 Apr 2013

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This is Alan Bennett at the top of his game, clearly having fun, and carrying us along for the ride, possibly despite ourselves. The kids are beyond precocious: witty, knowing and self assured (not the sullen, shy, frustrated reality that some of us endured). Just as Train Spotting turned drug abuse in Glasgow slums into a romp, the History Boys turns Oxbridge entrance into sexually charged comedy. It is unapologetically high brow, cheerfully arguing the nature of history and teaching, truth and exam technique, and sneaking in some serious literary criticism (of Hardy’s Drummer Hodge). The centre of attention is Dakin (Dominic Cooper), grappling with the Headmaster’s nubile secretary (Georgia Taylor, of Coronation Street), and the object of desire of staff and students alike. He is good looking, intelligent, and frankly an erotic fantasy figure. Hector (Richard Griffiths) is the emotional heart of the piece, as the old school pedagogue, full to the brim with culture and learning for its own sake, Father Christmas bursting with quotations. But also a predatory paedophile. It’s hard to know what to make of this. The boys treat his advances as no more than an inconvenience to be avoided, amounting to a grope while riding a motorbike (surely barely possible for a man of Griffiths’ proportions). All in all, a clever, gay, romantic comedy. It flirts with darker themes, but is consistently rose-tinted. Given this, I was left pondering why Hector had to die: the film could have ended cheerfully at 1hr 37 minutes. The post death coda didn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know.
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Poor man's Dead Poets Society

By Bobsview (549 reviews) from Gloucestershire , 02 Apr 2013

Supposedly a comedy but not for me. Could not get into it. Eccentric teachers and pseudo intellectuals. Poor man’s Dead Poets Society. Mediocre at best,
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Awful - give it a miss

By mcm (16 reviews) from Motherwell , 20 Mar 2013

[Highly rated reviewer]

Another attempt of the British film industry which fails badly. The dialogue is poor, the acting is strange, and the story line is awful. We lasted 10 minutes, which was 9 minutes too long. Give it a miss.
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British Dead Poets' Society......

By a customer , 11 Mar 2013

..... set in a Yorkshire comprehensive school. Whilst it was 'good' I found it difficult to rate it higher. Part of the problem being it was a little too clever for itself; I was a similar age at a similar time (doing my A-levels), and I simply thought the boys to be overly smart and smug compared to the reality of being an 18-year old lad in the mid-1980's.
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Teaching it all

By themethatisme (10 reviews) from Newcastle upon Tyne , 19 Jan 2013

Great film which does not detour from the stage play too much...but then with writing of such quality there is no need too. A beautiful selection of established and new British talent to carry the uniquely British humour of class warfare, aspiration, desire and human compassion.
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