Written by Alan Bennett, starring Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour, this film was always going to be good.
It's about the struggle of a group of school boys doing their best to get into Oxbridge.
It tackles issues like homosexuality, paedophilia, education (how one should be educated), elitism in schools, and the life of a teenage schoolboy.
It tackles quite a lot in one go.
The lead roles are brilliantly acted, though the film doesn't have much depth to the characters - you could either say this makes the characters easier to act, or you could say the acting was brilliant because there wasn't much character for the actors to use.
The film seems to laugh its way through really troubling topics - like the relationships between the boys and their teachers.
The question is, were the decisions made the correct ones to make?
When the headmaster discovers the paedophilic actions of Richard Griffiths' character, he quietly fires him and does all he can not to make a scene for the sake of his school's reputation. Shouldn't he have got the police involved? Considering it is set in the 1980s, when this sort of thing happened frequently, should we just take it on the chin or should we condemn the headmaster along with the teacher nonetheless?
