Good Will Hunting

Lance: I'd read someplace (I can't for the life of me remember where I read it) that Good Will Hunting was one of those movies that didn't hold up well over time. The author suggested that it was a movie that was great for the '90s, but watching it 10 years later one was left to wonder what all the fuss was about. So I was expecting less form the movie than I should have. Perhaps that's a good thing; I actually liked the movie better this time than when I first watched it a decade ago.

Since this is about the most celebrated Boston movie of all time, I'm sure everyone knows the plot. But just to recap: Matt Damon is Will Hunting, a mathematical genius who is stuck in the rut that all poor boys from Southie are born into, and instead of being a student at MIT, he's a janitor. When a professor puts an unsolvable equation on the blackboard, it is Hunting that solves the problem. The professor bails Hunting out of jail and tries to make him into his own image. To do so (and to help keep Hunting out of jail), the professor brings him to a therapist (Robin Williams) who just happens to be a fellow Southtie boy who somehow found his way out of the rut. Can the therapist get through?

Scott: Am I the only one who sees the word "therapist" and thinks of Turd Ferguson? Anyway, I went into this a bit skeptical. I've seen the end of it before, so there's that; plus, it's a Robin Williams "beard" movie, which means he's being serious and could at any moment veer into Patch Adams territory, which is the film equivalent of setting the National Terror Alert at Orange. It's just... hide the kids, you know?

However, I was pleasantly surprised, mainly because Robin Williams is actually pretty darn good in this movie. And the romance element wasn't as bad as I was fearing it would be. Those sorts of things can go wrong in a big hurry (see: Wonderland) but while this wasn't the best young-people-falling-in-love movie I've seen (Before Sunrise kind of takes the cake on that aspect of things) it didn't make me want to slap everyone involved either, which is a bit of a moral victory. In other words, this movie could have been terrible on dozens of levels but managed to be pretty good all around, which is probably why relieved audiences and reviewers went so overboard on the praise. Everyone was just expecting it to be an indie film apocalypse.

Lance: Apparently most of official Boston was included in those thinking it would be a failure. It was interesting to see that Dunkin Donuts and the Red Sox are about the only two institutions that allowed their brands to be used. Instead of cars marked "Boston Police" the cops drove "Metro Police" cars, marked to otherwise look like Boston police. Affleck's character wears a Bruins jacket in a handful of scenes, with the Bruins and NHL logos taped over. (And isn't that just classic Bruins...a character in what would become a huge Boston movie wants to wear their logo and they don't give permission. Their marketing people have less foresight of a gaggle of cave bats).

Those little things help make this less of a Boston movie than it could have been. Sure, the movie is set at MIT and Harvard and the main characters are set in Southie, but would the movie really have been any different if it were set at Cal Poly, Stanford, and San Francisco?

Scott: Well, the Carlton Fisk segment would have been, I dunno, The Catch instead or something. But that actually might have made more sense. As we discussed when we were watching the film, the one seriously wrong note in the film is the idea that any Red Sox fan would have given up tickets to Game 6 of the 1975 World Series to talk to some stranger in a bar. No way on Earth that would ever happen. That's just not how Sox fans work. Hell, I met my soul mate once but I had to ditch her to get to an April game showcasing Matt Young pitching against the Detroit Tigers. You just have to have your priorities straight. Robin Williams's character may not have spent the rest of his life wondering what would have happened if he had talked to the girl, but he did spend the rest of his life wondering how awesome it would have been to be at Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. Which is worse, hmm?

Lance: Not to mention that Williams's character also mentions that he slept out over night to get the tickets. Well, game 6 was rained out three times, so did Williams camp out in the soaking October rain for four days to get tix? Or had he been holding onto the ducats for three days, waiting for the game to be played? Either way, it would make the idea of giving them away at the last minute that much more absurd.

Anyway, Good Will Hunting is a very good movie. I'm just not sure it's a very good Boston movie.