The English Teacher: movie review

It’s too soon to see Julianne Moore in the role of a dowdy spinster, grading her high-school students’ papers with the same prim resolve that she shows chomping on a boring salad. Even so, the rewards of her against-type riskiness are too puny, as the script eases into a toothless comedy about an alum’s unproduced play, an awful-sounding suicide drama championed by Moore’s character like the second coming of Odets. The film’s cutesy vibe is closer to Glee than Election or Waiting for Guffman, with Nathan Lane’s exuberant drama teacher pitching several yards of camp tent. Backstage romances will surprise no one, nor will the creeping suspicion that this heavily worked-over project was left back a few grades.

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