The story of Katherine Ann Watson, a feminist teacher who studied at UCLA graduate school and in 1953 left her boyfriend behind in Los Angeles, California to teach at Wellesley College, a conservative women's private liberal arts college in Massachusetts, United States.
Like the turtleneck cashmere sweaters and girdles that tie down these promising women, the movie is trite and trussed.
– Desson Thomson,
Washington Post,
19 Dec 2003
fresh:
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.
– Stephen Hunter,
Washington Post,
19 Dec 2003
fresh:
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.
– Stephanie Zacharek,
Salon.com,
20 Dec 2003
rotten:
Women of the Fifties, rise up in protest.
– Peter Travers,
Rolling Stone,
23 Dec 2003
rotten:
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.