Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures Kevin Kline plays a classics professor at an elite boys' prep school in "The Emperor's Club," which will be released tomorrow.

ÎDead Poets' Society' is far better than its new replica, Kevin Kline's ÎThe Emperor's Club'

Utz: A new genre has been born · it's called "the dedicated teacher at a really handsome East-coast prep school leaves a profound impact on the lives of his students, and in the end, the passionate teacher realizes his students have taught him a lesson, too."

Betancourt: Yeah, "genre" meaning "mindless collection of pseudo-morals arranged haphazardly along a plot line made entirely of cliches" and "born" meaning "forced on the senior citizens of the world coated with Ensure in the form of jokes you don't have to hear clearly to get."

Utz: Yeah, it's got all the conventions of our new genre: freshly-ironed red sports coats with a gold emblem on the breast pocket, the spirited teacher who teaches history like he's reading a poem, while the students with eager eyes stare at him, inspired. Then the bad kid comes to town; the one Mr. Inspiration will hopefully mold into a fine man someday. There are "study montages" where in one minute of screen time we see the bad student become a young scholar, and all the while the sentimental, change-is-possible-after-all music plays.

Lindsay Utz

Grade:

B

Betancourt: I hate that music.

Utz: Me, too. Why can't that music play in real life, when I'm having a bad day or something?

Betancourt: Because, like this movie, it has nothing at all to do with real life. This film is embarrassing from the very first scene, when Kevin Kline (who plays Mr. Inspiration) glides in wearing loafers and starts enunciating everything he says like he's Julie Andrews or something. After all, how would we know he's smart if he didn't sit up straight and wear little wool pullovers with his little tie all arranged inside the V-neck? Seriously, at first I thought it was a spoof of "Dead Poets' Society." But then I was like, "Oh. No. It just sucks." More than even I could have imagined.

Utz: My favorite part was when the boys, on their first escapade with Johnny Danger (the troublemaker), steal a canoe and row over to the all-girls' Catholic school across the lake.

Betancourt: And, fulfilling some deep-rooted fantasy on the filmmakers' part, the girls start unbuttoning their uniforms in broad daylight within moments. Because that's what Catholic schoolgirls do.

Mark Betancourt

Grade:

C-

Utz: What happens next (but the only logical thing that could): Two little nuns walk up and catch the naughty youngsters. Then, our senior citizen-filled Cineplex Odeon erupts in a slew of gasps followed by a kids-will-be-kids chuckle. So cute ·

Betancourt: It's unbearable. And it gets worse. Because, once you're over the initial shock of how lame this movie is, you start desperately searching for meaning. This only makes things worse. Because the theme of this movie has more twists than the plot of "Heist" and all of them totally ambiguous. So Mr. Inspiration teaches virtue, but Johnny Danger keeps being bad, so Mr. I puts his faith in Johnny, but Johnny is so bad Mr. I starts doing bad stuff too. But wait, Mr. I. had a neglectful father. There's like two hours of this.

Utz: OK Betancourt, now that we've completely raped this movie and broken some serious senior citizen heart, we should address some good things about it. It's a heartwarming, beat-the-audience-over-the-head with dramatically profound realization kind of movie that old people, pregnant women and the introspective child can enjoy.

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Betancourt: Which is why you managed to bust out laughing as the grown-up Johnny gets all teary telling Mr. I his problems. Face it. The movie blows.

Utz: What about that twist ending? What the hell was the moral of this story? Shitty people will succeed, have blonde wives, freckled children and become our senators? That's what happens to Johnny Danger, he cheats and wins. And even though Mr. Inspiration walks off pleased with his place in the virtuous and honest world, Johnny Danger will go on to Congress and make laws?

Betancourt: Who the hell knows. The whole thing is flawed from the start though, because Mr. Inspiration worships the great men of history for their virtue. The problem with this is that the great men of history made their "contributions" through murder and deceit, usually on a scale as massive as their intellectual capacity. He tells the kids to walk down the path of the great men who have come before them, all those great white tyrants of knowledge who have reigned over "higher learning" for ages mostly because they knew pansies like him would be teaching future senators for millennia to come. You get the sense that in the end Mr. Inspiration realizes that teachers are the true great men, but that's just too Disneyland to believe.

Utz: This movie works because old people like it, and there's lots of old people.