It's funny that Williams starred in this, b/c he was in another older movie called "Sieze the Day" with Jerry Stiller, about a loser trying to make a buck in NYC--A Saul Bellow story. I liked the beginning, when he told his students they would be "worm food" and told them to listen to the dead past students as he whispered "Carpe Diem! Seize the Day!" But I had to question some of the assumptions in the movie. For example, the poetry class was only one class out of several. It's not more important than any other, yet Professor Keating selfishly arrogates to himself the task of molding the character of these boys, as if the other teachers were all just dopes. He fills his impressionable students with the notion that it is better to be a hopeless romantic than a boring banker. But shouldn't the teacher focus on poetry, and having the students appreciate that, instead of trying to turn them all into romantics? After all, most of the students were sent there to become lawyers, bankers and doctors. A good teacher would have gotten the students to love poetry, not the teacher. Also, one IMDb critic wrote that "this film only shows rebellion in the form of following a sectarian leader". I missed that. True individualism and rebellion often are leader-less, and the film seemed to suggest that these impressionable boys either "go with the official program", or "go with Professor Keating's"--no third way, really. The biggest problem I had with the film was that the characters were not credible. Prof. Keating may have some charisma, but for all the students to love him so quickly, and spend their free time going into the same cave to read poems I found unbelievable. While they were there, they just acted silly, and no real attention was paid to poetry itself. Also, the boy Knox, who woos the girl, I found unbelievable. At first he's all shy, and toward the end, he becomes a real bohemian charmer with his poetry and professions of love. Yeah, right. Charlie Dalton, the one who takes most seriously the passionate teachings of his mentor, becomes quite the charmer and poet--but then all of a sudden becomes the one in the group who best predicts the political fallout of his actions (to try and get girls admitted to school). So which is he, a romantic poet, or a realist? Can't be both at that age. The saddest part of the movie was supposed to be the death of one student whose dad would't let him become an actor. I was a bit touched by his passionate "Puck" performance, but it was confusing because his dad walks in during the performance, and you're thinking "his dad finally accepted him", but no his insensitive dad drags him home, where his son eventually kills himself that same night. The boy just couldn't say what he felt to his dad, but the boy was a natural leader among other boys; it was frustrating and depressing. If the boy was too weak to even tell his father his passion, then he probably wouldn't have survived as an actor, either (that's my take). And like Emperor's Club, both teachers, although leaving their intangible, yet indelible mark on the young men they taught, are shown to be quite weak and naive in matters of the world and politics. In DPS, Prof Keating is made a scapegoat and kicked out from the school, even as he watches in humiliation another prof teaching the exact same "excrement" he told the students to rip out of their books. So he succeeded in stimulating some bohemian feelings into the bosoms of a few college prep kids, but then he can't teach there any more--good job. In Emperor's Club, Prof Hundert loses his spot as headmaster to a young, politically-connected upstart, even though he taught there for 30 years. What a sap. Why should any student respect a man who cannot even make his way in the world, and is surprised he's passed over for promotion for being so insular? He also seems puny to the grown-up bad boy Sedgewick Bell, the student he tried to unsuccessfully "mold" into a moral man--Bell invites him to his huge estate, where he also announces his candidacy for Senator--it makes prof Hundert's moralizing seem a bit silly. here he is invited, via helicopter, to this rich man's estate--Hundert looks like a fish out of water. Prof Hundert lives in his little-boy world of the Classical "Greats", and wrongly assumes that the great Greco-Roman leaders were men of high principles and honor, values he tries to instill onto his students. Yet any meager student of this era knows that the likes of Sedgewick Bell, the boy who cheats to gain favor, would have fit in just fine next to tyrants such as Augustus and Julius Caesar, who used Machiavellian cunning and force, not honor, to make their mark in history. So in that respect, Emperor's Club was even worse than DPS, because the basic premise that "men of honor" ruled the world of long ago is flawed, whereas in DPS, Prof Keating acknowledges the chaotic passion in poetry, and tries not to moralize as much as instill his students with the same romantic passion great poets felt. I want to see "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" to see how this stacks up against these 2. I give this film a 7. It is beautiful, touching, but too sentimental at times, which almost ruins it.