In John Singleton's powerful portrait of college life in the 1990s, a group of incoming freshmen at Columbus University encounter racial tension, rape, responsibility, and the meaning of an education on a university campus.
1969, Chicago, Illinois, USA
1 January 1969, Cerritos, California, USA
25 July 1974, Dallas, Texas, USA
6 June 1973, Panama City, Panama
4 December 1973, Los Angeles, California, USA
20 March 1970, New York City, New York, USA
12 December 1970, Catskill Mountains, New York, USA
June 11, 1975 in Houston, Texas, USA
28 August 1973, Washington, District of Columbia, USA
20 August 1950, Jersey City, New Jersey, USA
11 June 1964, Santa Monica, California, USA
1972
July 24, 1975 in West Covina, California, USA
12 August 1972, Cordoba, Argentina
8 July 1967, New York City, New York, USA
28 September 1969, Encino, California, USA
20 July 1973, Brooklyn, New York, USA
July 25, 2010
The film lapses into polarized melodrama but it's a handsome piece, displaying a fair understanding of our desperate need to belong.
February 09, 2006
A stylish, intelligent film-maker, Singleton interweaves the threads of his demographic tapestry with assurance, passion and a welcome awareness of the complexities of the college community's contradictory impulses towards integration and separatism.
May 20, 2003
Everyone here, from beer-swilling white fraternity boys to rap-loving black students harassed by the campus police, can be judged at face value. Everyone is exactly what he or she seems.
July 06, 2010
Despite some likable performances (Epps is especially winning), the drama in Higher Learning is constricted, hemmed in by Singleton's compulsion to view his characters as walking paradigms of racial and sexual politics.
May 12, 2001
Higher Learning is often clichéd, unfocused and didactic. But Singleton has a goal most of his contemporaries have given up on: He wants to make a movie that makes a difference.
November 03, 2005
For anyone who's been to USC, it's a pretty hilarious parody of life there. If you take it as presented, however, it's over-dramatic and unbelievable.
March 23, 2005
Another tour-de-force for Singleton
December 06, 2005
There's some nice ideas and realistically felt characters here.
July 25, 2010
Singleton gets points for exposing the hypocrisy of "politically correct" institutions, but stilted dialogue and cardboard characterizations undermine the message.
January 27, 2004
John Singleton at his most pretentious and preachy.
October 18, 2008
Higher Learning has a great many things on its mind, which immediately places it in a rather exclusive category of American films these days.
February 13, 2001
Presenting problems is not the same as dramatizing them successfully, and as strong as his message is, Singleton has not found the best way to deliver it.
