Educating Rita
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Movie Reviews of Educating Rita
Movie Review: BRILLIANT
Summary: 5 Stars
This flick, with it's small ensemble caught me by surprise on re-run TV, a few years after its release, and I never forgot it. I was never a Micheal Caine fan, and was new to Walters. She won me over instantly, and this is now my favorite movie of all time, really because of her perormance, and of course the story. Basically, It's Pygmaleon, reborn. A working class "My Fair Lady" so to speak. Rita, a hairdresser without an education signs on for a course at a university, in an attempt to better her life, against the wishes of her "women should be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen" husband, Denny. Frank, a burnt out teacher with a penchant for whiskey, in overindulgence is her teacher. As the movie unfolds, He teaches her literature, she teaches him lessons in life. Eventually they both grow because of it. Rita in an attempt to change herself superficially, dubs herself Susan. She is a clean slate. Frank, Jaded and bitter, thinks she is better as the whimsical hairdresser, and balks at teaching her, in fear of her become like the other students he has. In the end he does, and she does change, but she also changes him. Her marriage crumbles because of her quest at rebirth, his career crumbles because of his drinking, and both are left with a new road ahead. It could have been so easy for another writer to have had them fall in love, have Frank to make the 100% turnaround (out of drunken-ness), that Rita makes of her life. But instead we get a more real ending. She has a new education, but an unsure future. He has a new future, but he may or may not still be a drunk. They both have a respect, and a frienship for one-another, and maybe a slight enamoration. In the end we are left with the sense they both will come out on top, but at the same time are not given the answers. Really a great watch for a rainy in the house night. The cast is great, you will be won over, and will watch this film repeatedly!Movie Review: Educating Rita
Summary: 5 Stars
Educating Rita
"Educating Rita" is in my personal top five movies of all time. Although labeled a romantic comedy I think that this movie is in a class by itself and defies categorization. I have a definite academic bent and this Oscar nominated, Lewis Gilbert directed, 1983 film still strikes a deep chord though I've watched it over and over.
Frank(Michael Caine), a divorced and bored-with-life alcoholic professor, just "happens" to be assigned as a personal tutor for the lovely vibrant working-class Rita(Julie Walters).
Rita shoots straight from the hip and is so lovely and full of life that she won't take no from Frank and thus starts her subtle metamorphosis from "uneducated" to "educated". However, in her process of transition Frank finds that he has created a monster, from his point of view(he refers to Shelley's Frankenstein), as Rita takes on the groomed academic veneer that she so desperately covets and Frank so openly despises.
During Rita's "education" a love subtly grows between the two and always lurks just below the surface. Rita is a "looker" and her natural beauty coupled with her delightful frankness sparks a constant longing inside of Frank.
This DVD begs the question...just what is real education? Is it the simple mouthing of academic platitudes from a learned and cultivated rote or is it lighting the spark of investigation inside of someone so that they may excel in life, and love? For the answer to that you need to buy this DVD or at least rent it somewhere :) and find out for yourself!
Movie Review: Don't get above your raising
Summary: 5 Stars
In Educating Rita, we find a woman, working as a hairdresser, who wants to better herself (played by Julie Walters). More than anything she wants to learn, not to put herself above family and friends, but from a desire to know, to see what else there is in the world that she can do and be.Unfortunately, everyone in her life finds the evolving Rita not to their liking, especially her husband.
Working and studying and coping with a husband who demands children are not easy for Rita. Things get particularly tense when the husband finds that she has been taking birth control pills behind his back. He burns her books (gifts from her tutor, Frank, played by Michael Caine) and her essay and forces her to decide if it's worth the effort after all. Not wanting to be trapped in a life in which she has never felt that she belongs, she pursues her studies, becoming more alienated in the process. Only Frank encourages her, in spite of his nearly constant alcoholic haze, and she finds her place among other students and while reading great literature, sometimes with her own quirky interpretations.
Even there, however, she doesn't quite fit in. Perhaps it's only in her own mind that she is not one with the academic world and those who reside there, but in the end she is happier and still yearning to learn.
This really is a marvelous story and one movie that any adult returning to school to pursue a degree should see. There are pitfalls and people who will try to discourage someone eager to gain that education. This movie is highly recommended.
Movie Review: Great movie
Summary: 5 Stars
This film holds up remarkably well after all these years because of Michael Caine's and Julie Walters' brilliant portrayals as the two main characters. Walters shows the evolution of Rita without seeming to act at all, she's so natural and comfortable in the role. Michael Caine is, well, Michael Caine, playing a role here that could have been written for him. The other characters are also well cast, even though they have relatively little screen time. The movie does have something of the feel of a stage play, but the director keeps it from feeling claustrophobic by inserting some beautiful outdoor sequences that fit well with the story and also open things up a bit. The soundtrack is really the only thing about the film that seems dated; all of the music is done with s synthesizer, which at the time of the film's release was probably considered quite trendy, but now just sounds sort of cheesy. However, once you get used to it, you forget about it and it does not interfere with enjoying the film.
The video transfer is simply not up to today's standards, with a washed-out image that I do not recall noticing even when I watched it on HBO years ago. It looks to me as if nothing at all was done to clean the image up before the transfer was made.
There are no extras at all, which is unfortunate. Walters and Caine are still both active and it would have been interesting to hear their commmentary.
Still, this is a classic and the movie itself more than compensates for the marginal transfer and lack of DVD extras.
Movie Review: too hungry for it all
Summary: 5 Stars
This jewel of a film ought to be seen by all who teach, learn, or wish they were doing either.
Julie Walters turns in the Oscar-nominated performance of a lifetime as an Open University working-class student turning up at Michael Caine's (also Oscar nominated) Oxford rooms for tutoring in literature.
The results are hilarious but - more important - deeply revealing of the pretensions on both sides of the class gap that separates these two stars of this low-budget 1983 production.
Walters, whose 'Rita' imagines herself 'a little out of step' with the University thing, is gorgeous and versatile. Caine plays a latter-day drunk Socrates, who only knows one thing: 'I know that I know absolutely nothing'.
He's wrong of course. He knows more than that and he discovers some of it via's delightful invasion of his miserable life. But, like Socrates, he is wrong in the very best way and his methodological insight unclutters the poverty that allows him to become rich.
EDUCATING RITA is one hundred eleven minutes of pure joy, a largely unremembered romantic comedy and more that may belong on your list of top ten movies.
Watch it with your son or daughter who's heading off to university, lest he or she think too much of her teachers and too little of life.