Good Will Hunting
A Character and Film In Search of Direction

Without the performance by Robin Williams, I may not have bothered to see Good Will Hunting. I had hoped to find another dramatic performance on the lines of Williams' previous work in Awakenings, Dead Poet's Society, or The Fisher King. Certainly Williams' character, a quirky psychologist who befriends a boy genius, sounds like good material.

Insofar as Williams' performance is concerned, I was not disappointed. The warmth and humanity he exudes as Dr. Sean McQuire is one of the most touching performances I have seen in a long time. Unfortunately, Williams does not occupy screen time for the majority of the movie. This is not a story about McQuire, but about a young man standing between two worlds.

In the film, Matt Damon stars as the title character Will Hunting, a janitor at MIT who can out-think the most talented physics and mathematics professors at the university. Will cannot, however, cultivate working relationships with anyone but his blue-collar friends. His days are spent doing menial labor and his nights are spent drinking in south Boston bars. In short, he has made no attempt to use his gifts.

Unfortunately, the story of Good Will Hunting gets bogged down in some truly uninspired moments which fail to move the story forward. Too much screen time is devoted to Will's relationships with his buddies like Chuckie (Ben Affleck), taking away valuable time from the story of his newly discovered genius. I became bored with these tangents, wishing the writers had stuck with Will's relationships with Dr. McQuire and his mathematics mentor Professor Lambeau (played by Stellan Skarsgard). Even Will's romance with a Harvard pre-med student, Skylar (Minnie Driver), fails to have any impact on the movie. His relationship with Skylar merely acts as another example of his inability to commit to a relationship for fear of being abandoned.

In fact, the story seems to focus so much on Will's personal issues that his genius nearly takes a back seat. The issue of child abuse becomes the focus, and muddles the forward movement of the story. Rather than focusing on Will's ability, the story begins to focus on his disabilities, excusing him from have done anything with his genius.

The screenplay, written by Damon and Affleck, suffers from poor characterization and slow movement. The characters are unsympathetic, with the exception of McQuire, who appears to be the only character in the film who really understands pain. When he berates Will for not understanding life, I felt that Williams genuinely understood his character's pain and conveyed it properly.

The story failed to find any more direction than its main characters. The end result is an unsatisfying one. If you are interested in seeing a more compelling tale of the drawbacks to genius, I would recommend renting Little Man Tate, directed by and starring Jodie Foster. It is a more poignant look at the pressure of unexpected gifts, and tells a stronger story.

MY RATING: 5 out of 10.

RATED: R
RUN TIME: 125 min.