![[box cover]](../../reviewimgs/d/dangerousminds.jpg)
Dangerous Minds
Easily one of the most moronic films to ever take place in an institution of learning. Inexperienced high school teacher Louanne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) is given the thankless job of teaching her school's "academy class," which comprises bused-in, economically deprived students who have no respect for teachers or formal education. But spunky Louanne, unwilling to be intimidated by her gangsta lot, decides that she must somehow get through to these kids, earn their respect, and help them finish high school. Appropriating such a shopworn premise, Dangerous Minds fails to find an original footing and cannot improve upon such predecessors as The Blackboard Jungle and Stand and Deliver. In fact, this Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer-produced vehicle is no more sophisticated than the average After-School Special, and the idea of Louanne, with her precious southern accent, actually turning her hard-scrabble students around via the poetry of Dylan Thomas is both sickly-sweet and impossible to swallow. We're also told that she's a former Marine and skilled at karate, but we never get to see it, leaving this writer grasping for his beaten-up VHS copy of Class of 1984 in search of the well-deserved ass-kicking that Dangerous Minds never offers when it should. Good transfer, DD 5.1, two music videos.
—JJB
