Dangerous Minds

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 4 September 2015

⏱️ 106 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Dangerous Minds was released in 1995, we were all too young to realize it was not breaking any new ground. So while it was just the latest entry in a long line of films that utilized the "save our students" story template, it still felt super duper important when we watched as kids. Now that we're all grown up, it's pretty easy to recognize that this is no Lean on Me or Stand & Deliver. At its best, Dangerous Minds is a tone-deaf oversimplification of what the real LouAnne Johnson actually experienced. At its worst, it's an insensitive misfire that betrays its source material and basically turns the whole situation into a cartoon.

Topics include: Coolio's hit single "Gangsta's Paradise" and the part it played in keeping Dangerous Minds in the zeitgeist for the past two decades, the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer seems to think he's making To Sir, With Love but probably would have been more at home with something like The Substitute, the actual methods Johnson used to make the curriculum more relevant for her students (spoilers - it wasn't with Bob Dylan lyrics), deleted scenes, awkward endings, why the truth was so much more compelling than this fiction, and much much more!

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About The Show

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember dangerous minds?
0:06.6	Hello and welcome, Hey, do you remember, Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:31.7	I'm Chris.
0:32.4	I'm Donna.
0:33.3	And I'm Carlos.
0:34.3	And today we're revisiting Dangerous Minds.
0:53.2	Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Dangerous Minds. Dangerous Minds is a very loose adaptation of Luann Johnson's autobiography, My Posse
0:58.1	Don't Do Homework. Johnson, a former Marine who still teaches to this day, was initially excited
1:03.7	by the prospect of her life's story becoming a major motion picture, but was later horrified
1:08.4	when she discovered how little resemblance it bore to her
1:11.0	actual experiences. The critics didn't find much to love either when the film was released in
1:15.9	August of 1995. Though high marks were often doled out for Michelle Pfeiffer's performance, the movie
1:21.4	itself was largely panned for being a particularly stereotypical and fallacious example of the
1:26.5	white savior story trope.
1:28.4	It was a surprise hit at the box office, though, and that success led to a television series
1:32.7	that ran for one season on ABC the following year.
1:36.1	But the most memorable aspect of dangerous minds is unquestionably Culeo's hit single,
1:41.3	Gangsta's Paradise.
1:42.7	It wasn't just the best-selling single of 1995. It's one of the
1:46.4	best-selling singles of all time. It was inescapable the summer the movie came out, and in my opinion,
1:52.2	it's the biggest reason Dangerous Minds has remained in the zeitgeist for the past 20 years.
1:57.5	Carlos, what do you remember about Dangerous Minds?
	...

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