rohitrd I recently caught this movie on VoD - and was really glad to have found it. While I agree with the other reviews here that the script and storyline are fairly predictable, what really makes this movie worth watching (and watching again) are two things : the music, and the performances. Talking of performances, Dustin Hoffman delivers a brilliant performance as expected of him. Particularly a few key moments really shine through with his under-toned delivery - like the scene in the school boardroom. Kathy Bates plays the perfect spoil to the uptight staff at school - and it is a joy to watch her. Equally brilliant is Debra Winger - who has perhaps just a few small scenes - and yet delivers a performance that adds to the movie. While I am no expert in music, the music slowly pulls you into the story, and really helps build the emotions in the story as we go along. I have watched this movie again - and the music itself forms a key character in the movie - I guess the credit goes to the Director to integrate the music so seamlessly. Overall it is a pleasant and uplifting - if sometimes light and cheesy - experience.

jonathandunford Last night we watched the Boychoir starring Dustin Hoffman. As musicians it was so terribly clear that most everything was wrong! As often in Hollywood films they don't seem to make as much an effort to understand music as they do to have the correct decors, regional accents etc. Dustin Hoffman doesn't seem to even be able to keep time in the Hallelujah Chorus in the Messiah! Scenes that make the choir director (Dustin Hoffman) seem more like a football coach than a musician! Who would talk incessantly while rehearsing? Also with complicated polyphonic music such as the Tallis it would be very very RARE that the choir director conducts with NO SCORE! On top of this how corny to think the absolute summit of choral victory is the Messiah by Handel? This is the best in choir music? So sad that the US is so far behind in classical music compared to Europe. The final concert shows once again Hollywood's totally illiterate in classical music. Two arias end on the dominant, this is in terms of cinema cutting the film of brutally just before the solution to the plot! In our modern world of 2015 we have made such perfections in images, sound etc but we are at a kindergarten level in music. Too bad that Plato's ideal of society where music has an equal level with the rest of education has been so terribly missed by most Hollywood producers. Shame on you! Next time you make a movie about a boy's choir maybe you should study one or two before writing your script.

Cinefill1 -Boychoir is a 2014 American drama film directed by François Girard and written by Ben Ripley. The film stars Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Debra Winger, Josh Lucas, and the American Boychoir School.--Production: -Hoffman stars in Boychoir as the choir master Carvelle, with Bates as the school's headmistress; the director is François Girard with a script by Ben Ripley. Originally, the cast was to include Alfred Molina, but he left the project. In February 2014, Debra Winger, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McHale, Josh Lucas, and newcomers Garrett Wareing, Joe West, River Alexander, and Grant Venable joined the cast. Wareing plays a young man who joins a boys choir; Winger plays the boy's Odessa, Texas school principal; Izzard, replacing Alfred Molina, will play Drake, the choir master's right-hand at the school; Lucas plays the boy's estranged father. McHale will portray a young music teacher who champions the boy and West, Alexander and Venable play other boys in the chorus. -Principal photography began in February 2014 in New York and in Stamford, New Haven, and Fairfield, Connecticut, some at Fairfield University.--Reception: -Boychoir received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 61% rating based on 23 reviews for an average rating of 5.9/10. The consensus states: "Boychoir rests heavily -- and not always comfortably -- on the shoulders of Dustin Hoffman, whose typically excellent work isn't always quite enough to compensate for an overly predictable drama." On Metacritic, the film holds a 51 out of 100 rating based on 10 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

velijn But it isn't, not in this movie. Whatever the reviewers thought about the settings, the actors, it will always be a personal opinion, which is fine by me. No matter that almost every adult character phones in his or her part, or that the script is packed with the usual clichés - it's "Oliver" all over again, and Garett Wareing even looks like Mark Lester - if the main ingredient is good we'll sit through the rest. But it isn't good, not by a long note. It is the music itself. And its part in the movie and with the reviewers. Were there truly "angelic voices" to hear, as one reviewer noted? Did we hear the same "Hallelujah", with the same godawful "additions"? And what about the D-high nonsense, when C-6 is the highest in all (boy) soprano scores? Never mind the improbable settings; it is truly a miracle that that our boy hero succeeds in learning all the intricate notations and harmonies in a jiffy where most choristers need years of practice. We may forgive August Rush (from the movie of that name) to spring up from street urchin to master composer and conductor in less time than it takes to turn a page in the score or script, but that movie was set up as a fairy tale, so we don't mind that very much. But this movie did try to put in a bit of reality of a chorister-to-be, of a choir school, of childish competition (by the adults), of the art of learning music, of singing. The two best scenes in it are just glimpses of what have could have been. It's at the beginning, when (in an all too brief shot) the boys learn about the intricacies of scales and harmonies in class, and the moment when Hoffman explains the majestic beauty of Tallis' "Spem in alium", literally surrounded by the glory of that music. But these grace notes are held not long enough to justify the butchering of Händel's Hallelujah, including the "cute" boy solo. What is the matter? Can't we just enjoy music, choral music, on its own? Must we disnify every work of art to make it palatable for the greatest possible range of spectators? Must we go to yet another stale variation of the "from rags to riches" syndrome? Of childish pranks that range every false note on the scale of probability? The choir school tradition in the US maybe somewhat lacking in tradition (it's hard to come up against a thousand year old history of British cathedral choirs), but not in talent, witnessing the many brilliant choir performances all over the country. But not in this movie. It will be a fine Christmas tearjerker, and Garrett Wareing is stealing almost all the scenes, and justly so. But the film is certainly not the high note we've come to expect from the maker of "The Red Violin" or "Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould".If you're genuinely interested in the true history of chorister schools, try to get you hand on DVD documentaries over this great tradition - the Salisbury Cathedral Choir and King's College Choir come to mind. If you want a musical tearjerker, try "August Rush", an improbable story but a true glimpse in what music can do to you, or "Shine". If none of all that matters, well go ahead and watch "Boychoir". You've been warned.