You are in for a good time if you go to see "Mona Lisa Smile," particularly if you enjoy films about cold, catty women who
lie constantly. (Don't worry; what few men there are in the film are dishonest, too.) If you like the dour, porcelain-faced Julia Stiles, you will be pleased to know she appears just as humorless and grumpy here as she typically does, and if you are a fan of Julia Roberts' huge, horse-like head and her equally equine braying laugh, rest assured both are in large supply. Rather than shooting the film for the wide screen, they had to shoot it extra-tall, to accommodate Roberts' elongated melon. It might be unprofessional of me to judge an actress solely on her face, but I counter that it is equally unprofessional for a good actress like Julia Roberts to act in such warmed-over cliché-fests as this. I do not mind her gaping, toothy maw when it is the source of strong, intelligent dialogue, but when all that emanates from it is verbal tedium, my mind wanders and I begin to contemplate whether it would be possible to fit both of my hands inside her mouth. (I believe it would. If I ever meet her, I will try.) Horseface plays Katherine Watson, a "bohemian from California" (we're told) who, in 1953, gains a position as an art history professor at ultra-conservative Wellesley College. Only girls go here, and all they want to do is kill time before they're married, at which point they'll slack off in their studies and start pumping out babies. (I went to Brigham Young University, so this scenario is not altogether foreign to me.) Katherine is appalled and begins whinnying her disapproval however she can, though as a bohemian from California – she went to Berkeley!!!!!!!!!! – there is only so much she can get away with before the administration turns its watchful, dyke-y eye upon her.
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