Lean on Me

Audiences are apt to root for the film's Mr. Clark even when they aren't entirely enthusiastic about what he's doing. Much of this is attributable to Mr. Freeman's fiery and compelling performance, but a lot of it also comes from the director John G. Avildsen (''Rocky''), who has stacked the deck in every way he can.

Like most simplifications, Lean On Me's genially despotic approach has its attractions, and it works fine as a movie. Simplification worked fine in Rocky and in The Karate Kid, too, but unlike those essentially simple films, Lean On Me oversimplifies a very complex issue. And unlike those films, Lean On Me leaves one pondering the fact that, in real life, things aren't ever simple. [9 March 1989]

The ability to subjugate everything to the story is both Avildsen's strength and his weakness. Lean on Me, with its warts-and-all hero, its driving rhythm, its carefully calibrated climaxes, is a finely tuned machine. It also happens to be a steamroller. [3 March 1989, p.Q]

Lean on Me wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants.

An unsatisfying conclusion, but an inspirational story deftly handled by Freeman.

Lean on Me is the type of cloying, crowd-pleasing drama you can't help but like - a little bit - even if its situations are contrived and its direction is stilted.

LEAN ON ME's manipulations justify Clark's drastic methods only superficially, by trivializing legitimate questions regarding Clark's actions.