If it weren't directed by horror legend Wes Craven, this film's treacly and supremely formulaic nature would come as no surprise, based on a true story or not. It is, after all, a classic "triumph of the human spirit" story, in which a
naïve but steely music teacher (Meryl Streep) bucks the odds to start a violin program in a ghetto school, eventually winding up onstage at Carnegie Hall with her kids and some of the world's most renowned violinists. The story of Roberta Gaspari and the East Harlem Violin Program has already been
told in the Oscar-nominated documentary SMALL WONDERS, and while overwhelmingly laudatory, it revealed aspects of the difficult, driven Ga...
Released:
1999
Rated:
PG
Length:
124 mins