When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.
There's a dramatic imbalance to Dick Wolf and Darryl Ponicsan's screenplay.
– Jeanne Cooper,
Washington Post,
1 Jan 2000
rotten:
Good intentions go for naught as director Robert Mandel (F/X) pounds home every contrivance in the script by Darryl Ponicsan (Taps).
– Peter Travers,
Rolling Stone,
12 May 2001
rotten:
School Ties has a leafy, genteel look that is somehow less than convincing, perhaps because the hairdos are too tidy and the resemblances to other prep-school stories too clear.
– Janet Maslin,
New York Times,
20 May 2003
rotten:
This is a bewildering mixture of fairly accomplished storytelling, awkward contrivances in the script, and lies in the overall conception so egregious they undercut any pretensions the film might have to social seriousness.