Good Will Hunting

A brilliant but deeply traumatized South Boston working-class janitor solves advanced graduate-level mathematics at MIT, leading him into court-mandated therapy with a widowed counselor who challenges him to confront his past and pursue his true potential.

Good Will Hunting is a good movie, but it doesn’t quite live up to the enormous praise surrounding it. At its core, it’s a familiar Prodigy Rebel Who Doesn’t Want To Get Close To Anyone Or Do Much With His Life drama that comes complete with a cross-tracks, cross-continental romance and an eccentric father-figure who is the only person who can break through to the Prodigy Rebel.

Damon is the genius in question, a 20-year-old janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Even more impressive is the fact that he solves a medal-winning professor’s proof that is posted in a hallway. He’s a very smart boy, you see, but he hangs out with slackers like Affleck who spend most of their time drinking and getting into fights.

It’s after one such fight that Damon heads off to prison, where the judge is unimpressed with his citing of legal precedents from the 1700s and only releases him when the MIT professor intercedes. In addition to helping him with difficult mathematical formulas, Damon has to see a therapist every week. A few amusing scenes ensue as Damon manages to drive away a series of therapists.

We know from seeing Robin Williams’ name in the credits that he’s going to be the one that ends up helping the kid with his life. The Williams character is dangerously close to the DEAD POETS SOCIETY mold but is a complicated and well-written one. If there’s any one good thing about GOOD WILL HUNTING, it’s that all the characters know what each other’s problems are and can have the kind of articulated arguments that only come across in movies.

Still, it’s a copout that the only thing holding Damon’s character back is that he was beaten as a child. His diatribe about having cigarettes put out on his body made me wonder just how many movie characters have been used as ashtrays. It’s a pretty convenient dramatic device that dates back, at least, to John Hughes and THE BREAKFAST CLUB. And even more of a copout is that all it takes to solve Damon’s problems is for Williams to keep saying, “It’s not your fault” over and over again.

I can complain all I want but the truth is Damon and Williams both did terrific work in this movie. Affleck, on the other hand, isn’t around much and, when he is, he more or less plays the same addled but charming character he always has. And Minnie Driver is charming, but as the Harvard pre-law love interest, her character is around for maybe 20 minutes total. I think she did better in GROSSE POINT BLANK.

Good work for a couple of kids, but it’s no TITANIC. Nevertheless, its powerful performances and unforgettable dialogue make it a deeply moving classic movie to watch. For more movie reviews and recommendations, visit MovieToWatch.

Twenty-year-old Will Hunting (Matt Damon) works as a custodian at MIT in Cambridge, spending his free evenings drinking at South Boston dive bars with his loyal lifelong friends Chuckie (Ben Affleck), Morgan (Casey Affleck), and Billy (Cole Hauser). Possessing an eidetic memory and innate genius-level mathematical intellect, Will casually solves an extremely intricate algebraic graph theory problem written on an open corridor chalkboard by Fields Medalist Professor Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard). When Lambeau posts an even harder proof, he catches Will completing it in secret, but Will flees into the night.

Shortly after, Will attacks a former childhood bully on a neighborhood basketball court, assaulting a responding police officer in the scuffle. Facing prison time, Will represents himself in court by citing archaic legal precedents, but the unsympathetic judge orders him remanded into custody. Lambeau intervenes, arranging a plea agreement with the court: Will is released into Lambeau’s personal custody on the dual conditions that he study advanced mathematics with him and attend weekly psychological therapy sessions.

After Will uses his razor-sharp intellect to humiliate and dismiss several high-profile psychiatrists, a desperate Lambeau contacts his estranged former college roommate, Dr. Sean Maguire (Robin Williams), who teaches psychology at Bunker Hill Community College. Sean recognizes Will’s self-defensive hostility and refuses to back down. Concurrently, Will begins dating Skylar (Minnie Driver), a wealthy British pre-med student at Harvard whom he met at a college bar, but his dread of vulnerability threatens every relationship he possesses.