gracegorman
Almost from the very beginning I wondered what on earth possessed Dustin Hoffman to become involved with this turkey. Most of the time he seemed bewildered. There was nothing in the script to explain his character's change from horrible to kindly. The script was generally awful. From a music teaching point of view it was cringeworthy. I watched it to the end for the music, but even then I wished some of the pieces were performed complete instead of cut off in the middle. That's 1 hr 45 mins of my life I won't get back.
anditso
I Was thoroughly entertained and was not expecting it.
jonathandunford
Last night we watched the Boychoir starring Dustin Hoffman. As musicians it was so terribly clear that most everything was wrong! As often in Hollywood films they don't seem to make as much an effort to understand music as they do to have the correct decors, regional accents etc. Dustin Hoffman doesn't seem to even be able to keep time in the Hallelujah Chorus in the Messiah! Scenes that make the choir director (Dustin Hoffman) seem more like a football coach than a musician! Who would talk incessantly while rehearsing? Also with complicated polyphonic music such as the Tallis it would be very very RARE that the choir director conducts with NO SCORE! On top of this how corny to think the absolute summit of choral victory is the Messiah by Handel? This is the best in choir music? So sad that the US is so far behind in classical music compared to Europe. The final concert shows once again Hollywood's totally illiterate in classical music. Two arias end on the dominant, this is in terms of cinema cutting the film of brutally just before the solution to the plot! In our modern world of 2015 we have made such perfections in images, sound etc but we are at a kindergarten level in music. Too bad that Plato's ideal of society where music has an equal level with the rest of education has been so terribly missed by most Hollywood producers. Shame on you! Next time you make a movie about a boy's choir maybe you should study one or two before writing your script.
Cinefill1
-Boychoir is a 2014 American drama film directed by François Girard and written by Ben Ripley. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Debra Winger, Josh Lucas, and the American Boychoir School.--Production: -Hoffman stars in Boychoir as the choir master Carvelle, with Bates as the school's headmistress; the director is François Girard with a script by Ben Ripley. Originally, the cast was to include Alfred Molina, but he left the project. In February 2014, Debra Winger, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McHale, Josh Lucas, and newcomers Garrett Wareing, Joe West, River Alexander, and Grant Venable joined the cast. Wareing plays a young man who joins a boys choir; Winger plays the boy's Odessa, Texas school principal; Izzard, replacing Alfred Molina, will play Drake, the choir master's right-hand at the school; Lucas plays the boy's estranged father. McHale will portray a young music teacher who champions the boy and West, Alexander and Venable play other boys in the chorus. -Principal photography began in February 2014 in New York and in Stamford, New Haven, and Fairfield, Connecticut, some at Fairfield University.--Reception: -Boychoir received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 61% rating based on 23 reviews for an average rating of 5.9/10. The consensus states: "Boychoir rests heavily -- and not always comfortably -- on the shoulders of Dustin Hoffman, whose typically excellent work isn't always quite enough to compensate for an overly predictable drama." On Metacritic, the film holds a 51 out of 100 rating based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
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