Just saw this for the first time - my word, what a god-awful script! Completely unnatural dialogue. The one scene among MANY which bugged me the most was when Robin Williams was telling the story of how he met his future wife for the first time right before game 6 of the 197? World Series. An important game, but he misses it to be with her. This is the famous Carlton Fisk home run game, in which he “waves” the ball fair. Every baseball fan knows the homer. The two Bostonians in the scene know the homer. But Williams relates the story, and Damon, who clearly is familiar with the play, alternately acts surprised and knowledgeable during the story. Not so easy to describe, sorry, just very unnatural-feeling.
So disappointing, for a goddamn Oscar-winning script…
I had heard nothing about it when I was taken to see it, didn’t know what it was about and yet I felt deja vu the whole time I was watching it. It must be the most unoriginal movie I’ve ever seen. I certainly couldn’t understand the hype - however, the two people I was with loved it.
The Robin Williams “It’s not your fault” scene led to the creation of the Billy Madison moment. This is a device my son and I use to destroy those really overblown scenes - just think of Adam Sandler as Billy Madison delivering the lines.
At the same time I know someone who, in real life, could be a “Will Hunting”. This guy, Sam, has perfect memory. Sam was a very nice guy and I worked with him for over a year. At the same time Sam could memorize anything in a short period of time. I tested Sam on more than one occasion and Sam always nailed it. The one test that made me believe that Sam could memorize anything he put his mind to was this:
I put together a list of 10 numbers with 20 digits each at home and printed it out and emailed the list to my work box. The values were all at least 20 numbers long. I went to work with Sam. About 10 minutes before Sam and I got off work emailed Sam the list of my numbers. Sam and I then went to a local bar and Sam recited all the numbers, in order, off the top of his head. Note, he had only 10 minutes to see my list.
Sam remembered everything. In fact, at one point Sam told me that his memory drove him nuts because he remembered all the good stuff, yet at the same time he remembered all the bad stuff as well.
I felt I was watching an NBC TV “Movie of the Week” dressed up with a bigger name cast and a better budget. Pathetic, unoriginal script for a film that pissed me off with its overwrought earnestness and by-the-numbers inspirational story. It was like a Horatio Alger character went to therapy.
I loved the film. Absolutely loved it. Great chemistry between Robin Williams and Matt Damon. Powerful themes. Natural dialogue (most of it). About that baseball deal, I know absolutely nothing about baseball (apart from the basic rules) so it didn’t bother me.
> At the same time I know someone who, in real life, could be
> a “Will Hunting”.
Not really, at least from what you say of him. Being able to memorize long strings of digits isn’t at all the same skill as it requires to be a good mathematician, let alone to be supposedly not just a good mathematician but apparently the greatest genius in history. A lot of the people I work with have math Ph.D.'s, and in general they have good but not great memories.
I think you people are deranged. This is one of my favorite movies.
The spoiler in the OP … it’s not that Will didn’t know the story of the game, he a)didn’t know the story of Sean and his wife, and b)he wanted to hear how the story was told.
It was a bonding moment, and an important one in which Will was doing the listening, for one of the first times.
I thought the dialog was very well done, with no wasted scenes, the comraderie between all the young characters was perfectly related. The cycnicism of the older characters well-done as well.
What’s even more amazing about the script, to me, is the work that went into it. It wasn’t formula pumped out by some Hollywood hack … it was a piece that was pastiched together from almost extraneous writings about those two guys’ hometown and the people they knew, or at least the attitudes they are familiar with. And then honed into coherrent story.
Unwatchable crap. The tip off is the title: let me get this straight, you NAME a character with the extremely unlikely name of Hunting (how many guys named “Hunting” have you met?), then you give him a first name of William, most of whom are called Billy, Bill, Willie and very few are called Will, and then you make a movie about him that you call “Good Will Hunting”–not because the character is especially moral or decent or anything, but just so that the title of the movie is a kind of pun–though what the hell “Good Will Hunting” even means is beyond me.
They lost me, IOW, on the marquee–and then the movie was a disappointing piece of soap-opera treacle that didn’t live up the wit and promise of the title.
Didn’t care for it. It was your standard “psychologial breakthrough” story, where a character talks to a psychologist and suddenly realized why he was all screwed up (usually due to one incident). Cue to music and end credits.
It wasn’t crap – as far as that tired genre goes, it was adequate – but certainly not a great script or movie. It probably won the script Oscar because a couple of actors wrote it; the academy loves novelty (yes, I know about Emma Thompson, but that was for adapted screenplay). But it was a forgettable film.
Jeez! You people have to learn the difference between REAL LIFE and an ENTERTAINING MOVIE. The fact that some of the math scenes weren’t exactly accurate has NOTHING to do with the quality of the movie. A mere handful of people would even notice that it wasn’t accurate. The rest of us slobs struggling to balance our checkbooks could give a flying fuck if it is accurate or not.
And the name of the character is part of the CREATIVE PROCESS as well. So what if he has an unusual name. Big Fucking Deal. What is wrong with you people? It was a great movie. Particularly because it was created by young, inexperienced guys.
Are you sure you people weren’t watching Finding Forrester? Now that movie was an obvious rip-off of GWH. I can’t think of any movie that GWH reminded me of.
I am not saying there isn’t a similar movie out there but I can’t think of one. Anyone care to fill me in?
I was put off by the standard romantic timekiller plot device:
[ul][li]Man and woman brought together, have sex[/li][li]One starts hinting at marriage/commitment/love[/li][li]The other freaks out and begins acting like a cranky four year-old[/li][li]Tearful (temporary) seperation[/li][li]Cranky partner snaps out of it with help of crusty but benign supporting character[/li][li]Joyful reunion, life happily ever after (implied but not seen in GWH)[/li][/ul]
