A buddy movie low on sugar and sentiment. What a relief.
Finding Forrester (2000)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:121
Fresh:89
Rotten:32
Average Rating:6.5/10
Consensus: Despite the predictability of its plot and its similarity to Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester has an honest, solid feel to it and good rapport between Connery and Brown.
Runtime: 2 hrs 16 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Director Gus Van Sant brings to the screen this moving story of a grizzled recluse and an inner-city teenager brought together by their shared passion for writing. Like Van Sant's Oscar-nominated... Director Gus Van Sant brings to the screen this moving story of a grizzled recluse and an inner-city teenager brought together by their shared passion for writing. Like Van Sant's Oscar-nominated GOOD WILL HUNTING, FINDING FORRESTER earnestly explores the struggles of a youthful genius whose position in society (underprivileged kid from the wrong side of the tracks) makes him seem destined for failure until he forms a relationship with a gifted but introverted mentor who helps him see the light.The youthful genius is a talented urban basketball player named Jamal Wallace (Rob Brown), who in his spare time reads everything he can get his hands on, secretly scribbling prose and poetry into a composition pad. The introverted mentor is William Forrester (Sean Connery), who took the literary world by storm with his debut novel, AVALON RISING, 50 years earlier but now spends whole days shut inside his Bronx apartment looking out the window onto a basketball court where Jamal hangs out. Buoyed by excellent performances from Connery and newcomer Brown, FINDING FORRESTER paints a compelling, alluring portrait of friendship while offering intriguing insights into the heart and soul of the dedicated writer. [More]
Starring: Sean Connery, Rob Brown, Anna Paquin, F. Murray Abraham
Starring: Sean Connery, Rob Brown, Anna Paquin, F. Murray Abraham, Busta Rhymes, Michael Nouri, Tom Mullica, Lil' Zane
Director: Gus Van Sant
Director: Gus Van Sant
Screenwriter: Mike Rich
Producer: Laurence Mark, Sean Connery, Rhonda Tollefson
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Reviews for Finding Forrester
Director Gus Van Sant does a solid job of keeping the film simple and personal even if all paths lead to a predictable (but satisfying) end.
Connery gives an energetic (if not especially subtle) and mostly convincing performance, and enjoys remarkable chemistry with terrific first-time actor Rob Brown.
At times you can feel Van Sant trying to loosen the movie's windpipe-folding collar, but he doesn't get far, except with Busta Rhymes, as Jamal's gone-nowhere big brother, whose moments are so full of bounce and warmth they feel like invasions from the sc
Is aimed squarely at everyone who loved Good Will Hunting...it's the same only different -- the very definition of formula fiction.
Finding Forrester is 100 percent bogus, from its high-concept characters whose resemblance to real human beings is distant at best, to the 'lessons' it imparts on everything from courtship to writing.
A movie about two writers, but it doesn't seem to have a clue about why writers write or about how writers write.
It takes the standard cliché of a mentor relationship, and makes it real.
There is a smooth, practiced charm to all of this, but, even with Connery fulminating for all he's worth, it wears thin.
The film is so finely crafted that you don't really care that you've seen it (and not all that long ago) before.
Generally, the movie aspires to be something more, but its retreaded dialog keeps getting in the way.
When either or both [Connery and Brown] are on screen, you can almost forget that these entertaining performances serve such a pat, predictable story.
When was the last time a Hollywood movie portrayed the acts of reading and writing in such a gratifying and fulfilling way that it made you want to read a real book rather than an 'airport' bestseller?
Its unhurried exploration of the interaction between the two leads is worth spending a couple hours in a movie theater.
The picture's played with a disarming looseness that makes even its most predictable patches endurable.
Handled deftly by Van Sant, who holds out on sentimentality for as long as possible.
While Finding Forrester is an average film that earns my average rating, the real disappointment is its ultimately disheartening theme that makes you wonder how it ever got made.
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