The Emperor's Club is a beautiful fraud - as gracefully proportioned as a Christopher Wren academy, yet as devoid of content as a prep-school promo film.
Kevin Kline plays a classics teacher whose passion holds his pupils spellbound until a senator's bad-boy son (Emile Hirsch) disrupts their attention and divides their loyalties. In the movie's source - Ethan Canin's short story The Palace Thief - pride and politics compromise the behavior of an exemplary educator. The story is stilted and unpersuasive; Neil Tolkin's script is worse. It's both a wan call for moral values in future leaders of America and a flimsy tribute to a pedagogue.
Kline can be brilliant, but he portrays this man of high moral tone by stiffening himself from the upper lip down. The whole movie lacks emotional and intellectual authenticity and spontaneity. Despite the confidence of Michael Hoffman's direction, it plays like an even deadlier Dead Poets Society. Only if you accept paternalistic notions of "Teacher Knows Best" and the belief that adolescents love learning by rote can you enjoy The Emperor's Club.
Kline's character believes that studying the Caesars teaches budding Masters of the Universe ethics and ideals of public service. But he specializes as a game-show host: the highlight of his year is holding a history-bee called the "Mr. Julius Caesar" contest. Following a series of competitive quizzes, the three top-ranked students answer increasingly forbidding factual questions about Roman history. The movie, like the story, subscribes to a spurious Hollywood concept of intelligence: Brain power equals accumulated data.
Our hero takes his first misstep after making progress with the once-intractable Hirsch. The teacher ups the reformed delinquent one slot in the rankings so the boy can enter the finals. Sadly, he proves to be the moral heir to his sleazy politician-father - and continues to prove it 25 years later, when, as a captain of industry, he invites his grown-up classmates to replay the contest on his resort estate. Kline, once again, officiates.
The original story is bitter as well as pretentious. Even as a crafty tycoon running for the U.S. Senate, the wicked pupil co-opts his instructor when the older man strives to expose him. The story is a fable of educational hubris.
The movie cushions the teacher's existential blows; it makes him lovable enough to attract a colleague's wife (Embeth Davidtz), who comforts him in the waning years of his career. He's also a "regular guy" who shatters the headmaster's car window with a well-hit baseball, endearing him to his class. (He yearns for moral purity, but takes no responsibility for the broken glass.)
In a dubious balancing act, the moviemakers also soften Hirsch's boorish character into a high-spirited boy with healthy appetites for girls and popular culture. This choice helps smother the drama in a nostalgic boys-school haze. The picture climaxes with a crescendo of preppie applause as thunderous as the one that concludes the new Harry Potter movie. Here it's more bogus and unearned.
Emperor's Club
Starring Kevin Kline and Emile Hirsch
Directed by Michael Hoffman
Released by Universal
Rated PG-13
Time 109 minutes
Score score *