Good Will Hunting

 Good Will Hunting is one of those films that you need to watch in the moment I think to really understand the hype it received.  The film won two of the nine Oscar nominations and I remember when it came out there was this great hype behind it but I fail to see what all the fuss was about. The film is good, Robin Williams and Matt Damon are fantastic but I'm not sure it deserved all the hype. Halfway through nothing had really happened and I was getting bored with it. The film is slow paced but has good dramatic moments and really a breakthrough role for Damon. I do enjoy his fast intellectual talk so I can see why he and Ben Affleck got the Oscar for best writing but there was a lack of depth I felt in the overall picture. The film was still based on stereotypes of poor-boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-getting-a-big-break-because-he's-super-smart-even-though-he-continually-screws-up-but-still-manages-to-get-the-girl. It's just that more recent films have made it a racial issue, which this films skirts just barley with mentioning the Irish in passing. Although it does deal with class and education, especially in this fun little scene.

When it came out I wanted to see it and it's always been a film on a list somewhere of films I wanted to see but just never got around to but I was disappointed in it, like a lot of films that i end up putting off. I think the sign of a really good film is it's ability to stand the test of time, it should be a film that is amazing dislocated from the moment it's from and sadly I was blown away after finishing Good Will Hunting and instead moved on to something else as the film lacked it's ability to retain my attention for a period of time after the film was over. There are moments that are brilliant but I'm not sure I would watch it again any time soon or add it to my collection, which in my book is not a good sign. However, I do see the reason for William's Oscar, this scene is powerful and the most memorable for the emotion of the entire film.