Highly Overrated But Still Good

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

"The Great Debaters" was Denzel Washington's second movie as a director and it is one of the best movies that he has ever done. The movie stars Washington as Professor Melvin B. Tolson who teaches at Wiley College which at the time during the 1930's was an all black college located in Texas. As the title of the movie happens to give away during the early scenes of the movie Tolson decides to start a debate team that even though it has very few members during the course of the movie the team proves to be very effective with a strong winning record when it comes to debating other colleges from all across the country climbing the ladder from debating just black colleges in the beginning to debating white colleges near and towards the end of the movie. The team members include James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker, who isn't related to Forest Whitaker) whose father James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker) also happens to be a college professor, Samantha Booke (Jurnee Somllett-Bell) and a few others. Washington's direction for this movie is so good along with Robert Eisele's screenplay the movie really makes you feel like you are really there in the debate audience watching these characters or at least that's how I felt while watching the movie. This isn't the only movie that Denzel Washington starred in in 2007 the other film being Ridley Scott's "American Gangster" which was also based on the true story of mobster Frank Lucas in which Washington also happened to give a great performance. Because of this movie i'm looking very much forward to seeing the other two films that were directed by Denzel Washington which are "Antwone Fisher" (2002) which was his first film as a director, and his most recent film "Fences"(2016). This is the best civil rights drama that I have seen so far and is one of 2007's very best films.

It's 1935 Wiley College Texas. Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington) coaches the debate team with a bunch of raw youngsters. James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) is one of the kids. His father Dr. James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker) is an over bearing preacher. Meanwhile Tolson is trying to organize both black and white farm hands to unionize.This movie has its moments. Directed by Denzel Washington, this movie allows all the actors to shine. But as a visual drama, debates are not the most physical endeavors. If the competitions are real, they do not make for a compelling story. After all, good debaters take both sides of the debates with equal gusto. There are some good exchanges. However the debates feel both overwrought and fake. It's arguable whether a real debating contest could ever be truly cinematic.The movie is very earnest in its story. There are great slices of the time. The unionizing effort seems to be the better story. And the puppy love is too much melodrama. I can't really feel sorry for the boy. Mostly for the subject matter and the great actors involved, I would recommend this movie.

The story could have been so much better. This is an important subject matter, but somehow it goes far away from its real inspiration, that a team of black college students was in fact winners of several debate-offs in the depression.Do we really need to see an educated man being humiliated in front of his son to get the point, that Texas was a segregated state way into the 20th Century? You could just as easily have seen that on an episode of Roots or even North & South. It is a rather shameful scene and it detracts from an otherwise superb subject matter.Also, there should have been a lot more focus on what it meant for Harvard to be debating a group of not just black students, but a college that was way below Ivy League. Here we are just shown that the people of Harvard are a more respectful bunch than any of the other supporting characters we have met in the film. Is Oprah and Denzel afraid of alienating the white elite? The only white people we see as bigots are small town folk and an especially creepy John Heard.Otherwise, the last scene at the Harvard debate is certainly powerful. Not only does it say everything that the rest of the film so blatantly avoids, but it actually isn't that corny as I thought it would be. Yes, it is not based on reality at all and the moral is something that is far from fresh. But it is not overdone and actually believable, as believable as a fictional account can be.

As a white man myself whenever I see movies involving racial hatred, none more so that movies depicting Nazi Germany during World War 2, and the antics of the Mississippi South in the 60's, all I want to do us puke ( be literally sick ).Because I cannot believe that white mindsets can "think" that just because someone has a different coloured skin, that those "coloured" people, are in fact inferior to white people.Anybody reading what im saying here, I ask you as a white person, to explain to me just how a black person, can be inferior to a white person ?, if anything, it is the other way round, ie that a white person is inferior to a black person.To me, The Great Debaiters simply told of a true life struggle, as all true life struggles are, of black people in America, but with a good solid central story.This film simply underlines a mindset that I thank god that I have never had.So, any film that shows up the whites as a bigoted, ill educated, and arrogant race, has my vote.Im aged 62 if anybody is interested, im not a young naive man, I've had black frienbds in my life, and white friends, and the blacks I have always found to be more interesting, and better educated, but my white friend just think they are.Descrimation is a terrible thing, so why are some white people descrimative ? When you reading this, finds out the real answer to this, pease let me know.