Good Will Hunting

Genius and emotional pain, the whole movie the guy worked through childhood traumas to live happily, a very touching movie and wonderful actors, I recommend it to everyone

I've always found this movie a little bit overrated since it is an ordinary movie with an ordinary screenplay directed by a great director that here only manages to make his work without giving the passion he gave in his previous films. That's what I feel as a viewer.

Good Will Hunting keeps you engaged by its incredible performances from Robin Williams and Matt Damon, but it's conventional plot and unoriginal love scenes hinder the film from being anything special.

I recently had the opportunity to see Good Will Hunting for the second time. I had not seen it since its video release in 1997. It's funny how 15 years can change your opinion about a movie. I was lukewarm to the film back then, but now 15 years wiser I see it in a new light. I had initially dismissed this film as a two hour study of a bunch of unlikeable and unbelievable people. But now it is evident that Matt Damon deserved his Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the title character, the good Will Hunting. Damon does a yeoman's job making us believe in someone who is not only a math genius with a photographic memory, but a barroom-brawler, cynic, janitor, lover, and all-around down-to-earth working-class Joe. Damon and his compadre Ben Affleck also deserved their Oscar screenplay win for creating a character more fantastic than any from the mind of J.R.R. Tolkien. Robin Williams also deserved his Oscar win for having us buy his interpretation of an all-knowing beard-sporting eye-glinting joke-cracking-but-no-nonsense psychologist. Affleck, director Gus Van Sant, and the rest of the cast merit mention as well for trying to get us to like and accept all the unappealing and implausible characters who populate this fantasy world. All this leads me to believe that I should revisit films like Showgirls, The River Wild, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and The Greek Tycoon. Maybe I was a little too harsh in my initial assessment of these as well.

Alright, I am going to go straight ahead and say that in no way do I understand how people manage to like this movie. Absolutely everything in this film is outright terrible: the premise of two grown men going out of their way to help some guy "because he's a genius", the cliché boring love interest and friend subplots, young Damon showing his "intellect" by citing old books with a super-serious face, Affleck picking up girls (extra cringy!), Williams remembering his wife's farts (literally), Minnie Driver's story about geriatric blowjobs, Casey Affleck jerking off (not shown explicitly, thankfully), the battered "do what you really like, don't miss your true love" morale... The list could go on forever, or for about two hours, to be exact. The only bright spot is Robin Williams (when he's not remembering his wife's farts, obviously), his performance is solid, his smile heart- warming, his wrists very hairy. What I also don't get is why people have doubts whether Affleck and Damon actually wrote this piece of trash. I mean come on, saying that someone isn't capable of even coming up with something as bad as Will Hunting is probably the worst insult there is.