jmobley70 Review of The Music Teacher

The Music Teacher (2012 TV Movie)

Hallmark sets the bar low with this one!

[3/10 · 2 October 2012]

I let this movie languish in my DVR for a month and a half. Now that I've finally watched it, I regret letting it take up the memory for that long! Here is yet another example of Hollywood getting everything wrong when it attempts to portray something it should have intimate knowledge of: putting on a show! It's almost as if Hollywood is perfectly satisfied to perpetuate all the misconceptions that "outsiders" have about the world of showbiz! "Glee" is, of course, the main offender currently. The show isn't even aptly titled; the group of young people at the heart of it is actually some mishmash of glee club, show choir, and musical theatre club. But that's another review ... I don't know where to begin critiquing "The Music Teacher," but here goes: Is Ms. Daley actually the music teacher at the school? The title of the show would suggest so, but in one scene it appears she's the geography or social studies teacher, what with the maps on the wall. She also acts fearful of losing her job, but it's just the after-school music program (which seems to actually be the musical theatre program – a different thing!) that is in danger of being cut. Similarly: in a flashback, it appears Ms. Daley teaches piano in her home, but then she starts singing as she plays! Is this actually a piano lesson, or a voice lesson? No music teacher would combine them, at least not for the child at the level her student appears to be! The songs in "Life: The Musical" – the show within the show – are absolutely dreadful. They don't seem to have the regular verse-chorus structure of anything you would label a "song," or even have a discernible melody. They just seem to keep going and going, wandering aimlessly, never reaching any sort of climax. (Do any of the songs actually end, or do they just … stop?) This leads me to conclude that the budget for this little piece of televisual cinema was quite small (or that maybe the majority of it went toward Ms. Potts' salary and permission from the Hasbro Corporation to use the logo from their board game). I would have liked it if the show that the alumni wanted to put on was a "real" musical – one that actually exists in this world, something like "The Music Man" or, hey – if they needed something in the public domain – "The Pirates of Penzance,"! I have a hard time believing that a bunch of high school students would love these particular songs – which sound like something that people in their 30s or 40s would listen to – and love them so much that they still have fond memories ten years later and get the urge to do the show again! (This, by the way, if done correctly, involves paying the publisher royalties, which I doubt either the school board would approve, or that this group would even have any idea was necessary.) Something else that indicates a low budget for "The Music Teacher" was the awful Muzak that was always playing on Zack's radio. I began to think, Are we in the truck of a 27-year-old man, or a hospital elevator? I don't remember hearing one "real" song in this movie. The music supervisor on this project must have accessed some free background-music website for source music! Clichéd phrases abound! I think every character says some variation of "Well, it's late … I should be going …" at least once whenever a situation gets tense! A sign of lazy writing! And Ms. Daley, as the director of "Life," would not let a tense situation dictate the end of a rehearsal. A decent director doesn't dismiss until he or she is satisfied with the scene! Finally, to be entirely pessimistic – or maybe just realistic – the performance at the end would not be sold out (if we're wanting this to be indicative of how things turn out in the real world), and – to be really nitpicky here – the people who did show up would not be dressed up as nicely as the audience is here! Also, it is totally inappropriate to applaud a solo in the middle of a song unless it's jazz – which this is most definitely not. I realize there's always the need to suspend some amount of disbelief while watching any movie or TV show. It just bugs me when "true-life" stories, with characters and situations you're expected to relate to, have to be so peppered with details that ruin it. I summarize with a question that paraphrases my opening statement: when is any movie or TV program that dramatizes the world of showbiz ever going to get anything right about it? This was the first Hallmark movie I've seen. Now I know, if I ever watch another, to set my expectations very low.