The Great Debaters: Critic Reviews

...The Great Debaters soars with words and feeling.

There are enough things to admire about The Great Debaters, the heavily fictionalized true story of The Little Debate Team That Could, that your impulse is to forgive the movie its shortcomings.

An enjoyable, rousing film, despite its formulaic quality.

A rouser, a stunner, almost a jubilee of emotion and suspense by the old standards of Hollywood melodrama, circa the time the actual events themselves took place.

For a film about the power of speech, it's the quiet moments of rapture that say everything.

The film avoids potentially interesting frictions by always letting the team debate (and win) on the 'correct' side of every issue -- that which aligns with generally accepted modern liberal sympathies.

It's an inspirational film that wears its heart on its sleeve. But it's got a good, strong heart and, despite some awkward moments in the later going, it's an elegantly directed second effort from Washington.

As for Mr. Parker and Ms. Smollett, there's no debating what awaits them -- stardom, very soon.

With Antwone Fisher and now The Great Debaters, Mr. Washington has made a pair of movies that dodge enough cliches to indulge in a few.

The actor-director brings the energy and rhythms of a sports flick to a little-known bit of American history in his deeply enjoyable film The Great Debaters.

In the stacked-deck world of Robert Eisele's script, this team has an uncanny ability to grab the hindsight-friendly side of every issue.

This is one of the year's best films.

Director Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters is pure Hollywood, not without its share of storytelling cliches and golden-toned inspirational teaching moments, but you know what? The results really are inspirational.

Conceived like a sports movie, this delivers passion, nuance, and historical insight along with unnecessary hokum.

Washington succeeds in making debating as enthralling as contact sports.

Washington's charisma is on full display, and he makes Tompkins a figure of remarkable courage.

Even if it does precisely what you expect it's going to do, you still love it for doing it so well and telling a tale that bears repeating.

The quality of the performances is uniformly good.

The Great Debaters is one of the happiest surprises of the season; it's marvelously edifying entertainment you should not miss.

Pic's emotional appeal is significant.

There's an air of extreme predictability and inevitability in the script.

[It's] is history at its most entertaining, and a vivid reminder that we're all living in a country built and then rebuilt by people who turned their passion into logical, rational arguments that moved us, step by step, down the road to justice.

It's ultimately less a movie than a high-gloss civics lesson.

All of this unfolds with such predictability, the title might as well be The Great Foregone Conclusion.

Washington's direction is never less than capable, and cinematographer Philippe Rousselot's images flow gracefully from scene to scene.