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Buy this DVD with Erin Brockovich DVD ~ Veanne Cox today!

Total List Price: $27.92 Buy Together Today: $20.48

Amazon.com
Julia Roberts's command of the screen is so effortless, it's easy for moviegoers to take her for granted--but we shouldn't. Mona Lisa Smile--about a noncomformist teacher at a private school who encourages students to pursue their individuality--is pretty much an all-girls version of Dead Poets Society that mixes '50s fashions with '70s feminist thought. However, its lack of ambition doesn't diminish the talent that's gone into it: The writing and directing are well-honed and skillful; the actors--a talent-studded cast featuring Marcia Gay Harden, Kirsten Dunst, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Julia Stiles, and Juliet Stevenson--are uniformly excellent. But without question, Mona Lisa Smile rides on Roberts's shoulders and she carries it with ease. She's possibly the only contemporary actor who simply owns a movie the way Bette Davis, Jean Arthur, or Claudette Colbert once did, radiating a engaging mix of intelligence, drive, and emotional warmth that cannot be matched. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
Intelligent, responsible, superfluous. Miss Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), a bohemian, feminist art historian from California, shows up as an instructor at Wellesley in 1953, when the college is still an upper-class breeding ground for dutiful young wives. Stirring the place up, Katherine involves herself in the lives of her students-a bitch (Kirsten Dunst), a floozy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and a superior brain determined to marry right away (Julia Stiles)-and has an affair with a sexy but untrustworthy Italian teacher (Dominic West). The fight against traditionalism has long been won, so the movie encourages the audience to congratulate itself on what it already believes. Yet Mike Newell's direction is solid, and the period décor and costumes are a solemn riot of chintz and pleated skirts. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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