Good Will Hunting (Robin Williams, Matt Damon) 1/2
I suppose the title of Good Will Hunting is intended to be an ironic oxymoron of some kind. Will Hunting isn't a very good person at the beginning of the picture, but he is at the end. Get it? Or maybe it's a statement that Will is hunting for some goodwill. Or maybe it's just a couple of Hollywood actors trying to be coy and clever as they put the finishing touches on their self-proclaimed über-screenplay. I tend to think it's the latter.
When the Academy gave Matt Damon and Ben Afflect their Oscar in 1998 for writing this vehicle, it was purely because they were actors who wrote a script. I find it hard to believe this screenplay merited an award of any kind, but in a year when Boogie Nights and As Good As It Gets were among the nominees, it seems inconceivable that they won.
The film's fundamental flaw is its ridiculous premise. One minute, Will Hunting (Damon) is a violent thug, the next he solves theorems on chalkboards at Harvard. This is because he is a janitor. Or maybe Will is a construction worker, because in a future scene he's apparently been working construction for years. No matter. Any movie plot that assumes that an individual who can solve mathematical formulas (or is that formulae?) in mere minutes (incidentally, these same equations take the top mathematicians on the planet 2 years to solve), but never once get a scholarship or rise above anything other than manual labour is a huge contradiction. He's ready to pound the tar out of a total stranger for no reason, and in the very next scene, he goes on an intellectual rant against an even more irritating stranger but doesn't lift a finger to him. Hunting's intellectual rants are phony and contrived, as they imply he spends hours reading books on physics and history and chemistry and can recite page numbers of textbooks. Rain Man he's not.
Will is forced to go to therapy sessions with Robin Williams. These scenes are what really save the movie, and a few of them even resonate. But the movie tries to shove a "Ooh, he's so misunderstood!" viewpoint so far down our throat that we're left fighting for air at its manipulation.
The movie is directed by the overrated Gus Van Sant, and almost every scene is filmed in yellow filters for no apparent reason. It's an ugly looking picture, and this is thanks in no small part to the hideous Minnie Driver who probably needed a special camera filter of her own to hide her horse-face. Since Will is meant to be a misunderstood genius, we need an Antonio Salieri onboard, so enter Stellan Skarsgård as the jealous professor who tries to tame him. Note how he wears a white foulard scarf in every single scene he is in. Sheesh.
This 1997 movie evidently tapped a nerve when it was released. The only thing it did for me was get on my nerves. From its pretentious folk music in the background to the jarring Boston accents from all of performers, the film even sounds annoying. Good Will Hunting plays like an unwelcome fart in a crowded room. It's uncomfortable, immature, and smells a lot worse than people care to let on.
