One of my all time favorites.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Stet Tate is tough and living with his struggling single mom. His teacher tries to get him to audition for Carvelle (Dustin Hoffman) but he takes off only to find his mother had died. His biological father Gerard Owens (Josh Lucas) would rather keep him a secret from his family. Gerard puts him in the boarding school National Boychoir Academy run by the headmistress (Kathy Bates) and choir master Carvelle. Drake (Eddie Izzard) is infuriated by the lowering of entrance standards. However, Stet's natural singing talents and drive put him in the touring group. Soon, he's in conflict with Devon, the star of the group.Hoffman takes a similar tack as Whiplash but ends up being more like Mr. Holland. The young lead shows some capabilities but it may be asking too much. It's also may be asking too much to make choir singing compelling. It does a relatively good job to make this particular competitive world interesting but choir singing is not exactly toe tapping. Overall, it works up to a point.

-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".

This movie, released in 2015, had a brief run recently at Princeton's nonprofit movie theater. It's the story of the fictional "National Boychoir School" and features the singing of students from the local, real-life American Boychoir School. ABS has fallen on hard financial times, and if it needed an infomercial to stimulate a really big donation, this is it. The movie stars Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Debra Winger, and Eddie Izzard in the adult roles, but director François Girard and writer Ben Ripley demand little of their talents. The story dwells mostly on the boys, and one particular boy (Garrett Wareing)—a misfit who arrives at the school unable even to read music, yet such a vocal prodigy that . . . yes, you can guess the rest. When the credits rolled and it turned out the movie had some affiliation with the Hallmark Hall of Fame, that was one of the least surprising moments in a string of non-surprises. Leaving aside its dramatic shortcomings, the creators' generosity with the music lifts the whole production. Actual ABS students are used in the production, according to a local news story, and director Girard said of the school, "It was extraordinary to see them at work. What they accomplish goes way beyond music." A good movie for kids and a pleasant, if unchallenging interlude for grownups, too.

But it isn't, not in this movie. Whatever the reviewers thought about the settings, the actors, it will always be a personal opinion, which is fine by me. No matter that almost every adult character phones in his or her part, or that the script is packed with the usual clichés - it's "Oliver" all over again, and Garett Wareing even looks like Mark Lester - if the main ingredient is good we'll sit through the rest. But it isn't good, not by a long note. It is the music itself. And its part in the movie and with the reviewers. Were there truly "angelic voices" to hear, as one reviewer noted? Did we hear the same "Hallelujah", with the same godawful "additions"? And what about the D-high nonsense, when C-6 is the highest in all (boy) soprano scores? Never mind the improbable settings; it is truly a miracle that that our boy hero succeeds in learning all the intricate notations and harmonies in a jiffy where most choristers need years of practice. We may forgive August Rush (from the movie of that name) to spring up from street urchin to master composer and conductor in less time than it takes to turn a page in the score or script, but that movie was set up as a fairy tale, so we don't mind that very much. But this movie did try to put in a bit of reality of a chorister-to-be, of a choir school, of childish competition (by the adults), of the art of learning music, of singing. The two best scenes in it are just glimpses of what have could have been. It's at the beginning, when (in an all too brief shot) the boys learn about the intricacies of scales and harmonies in class, and the moment when Hoffman explains the majestic beauty of Tallis' "Spem in alium", literally surrounded by the glory of that music. But these grace notes are held not long enough to justify the butchering of Händel's Hallelujah, including the "cute" boy solo. What is the matter? Can't we just enjoy music, choral music, on its own? Must we disnify every work of art to make it palatable for the greatest possible range of spectators? Must we go to yet another stale variation of the "from rags to riches" syndrome? Of childish pranks that range every false note on the scale of probability? The choir school tradition in the US maybe somewhat lacking in tradition (it's hard to come up against a thousand year old history of British cathedral choirs), but not in talent, witnessing the many brilliant choir performances all over the country. But not in this movie. It will be a fine Christmas tearjerker, and Garrett Wareing is stealing almost all the scenes, and justly so. But the film is certainly not the high note we've come to expect from the maker of "The Red Violin" or "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould".If you're genuinely interested in the true history of chorister schools, try to get you hand on DVD documentaries over this great tradition - the Salisbury Cathedral Choir and King's College Choir come to mind. If you want a musical tearjerker, try "August Rush", an improbable story but a true glimpse in what music can do to you, or "Shine". If none of all that matters, well go ahead and watch "Boychoir". You've been warned.