Kathryn Watson is an ambitious woman who leads a new ambition towards the dissemination of meaningful art. After Catherine graduated recently at the University of California, she hired to teach the history of real art at Wellesley's prestigious Women's College in 1953. Katharine began her mission to confront old society norms that seemed to be uninspiring and opposed to art. Catherine is attracting her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to embark on a new challenge to the application of art in this prestigious college.
1 November 1946, Terrace, North Carolina, USA
8 June 1970, New York City, New York, USA
30 May 1926
13 May 1978, Brooklyn, New York, USA
15 August 1978, San Clemente, California, USA
30 October 1956, Essex, England, UK
12 July 1980, Montclair, New Jersey, USA
December 26, 2010
Glossy entertainment value but far from art.
December 20, 2003
In terms of the gap between the movie it's trying to be and the movie it actually is, Mona Lisa Smile is in many ways indefensible. Yet for all its problems, it's satisfyingly movielike.
December 19, 2003
Anyone who's ever been moved by a teacher to dream a slightly bigger dream than his parents thought he or she was capable of achieving ought to love the film, for it gets at a truer model of teacher's inspiration.
January 10, 2004
Roberts asks her students rhetorical questions: What makes art good or bad? Who decides? But the movie answers them as canonically as the syllabus Roberts abandons.
December 19, 2003
Like the turtleneck cashmere sweaters and girdles that tie down these promising women, the movie is trite and trussed.
September 20, 2004
...would have been better served by characters with a little less formula than the paint-by-numbers projects so loved by these women of Wellesley College.
July 20, 2004
Mike Newell directs a formulaic Roberts vehicle that isn't without its charm.
October 30, 2004
Period dress, set design, manners and acting are fine--as is Mike Newell's direction. If only the script was less predictable.
May 12, 2009
Kirsten Dunst, Julia Stiles and Maggie Gyllenhaal furnish well-observed performances that frequently outshine Julia Roberts's reflex characterization in this female variant of "Dead Poets Society."
May 14, 2004
Mike Newell takes the road most travelled in tackling the sexual apartheid and hysteria of the 1950s.
December 23, 2003
Women of the Fifties, rise up in protest.
December 19, 2003
Rather than being a fascinating exploration of a much more constrained time in our social history, the film simply feels anachronistic.
