Dangerous Minds (1995) on Netflix
Louanne Johnson, a former Marine, takes a job teaching at an inner-city high school. Her students, teenagers from poor backgrounds caught up in gang warfare, refuse to engage with anything.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.5/1061,845 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes31%
Trailer
Plot summary
After a career in the Marines, Louanne Johnson is hired to teach at a high school in a poor part of the city; the post comes through a friend who teaches there. Her first day goes badly: the teenagers, many caught up in gang warfare and drug pushing, ignore her and coin a nickname about her race and lack of authority. She comes back wearing a leather jacket and shows the class karate. When they still withdraw from the curriculum, she builds lessons around what interests them, giving everyone an A to maintain and using Bob Dylan's lyrics to teach symbolism and metaphor, then Dylan Thomas after a talk with Hal Griffith. Candy bars and a theme park trip reward the class, while George Grandey and Carla Nichols press her to stay within the prescribed work.
Cast
- Roberto Alvarezas Gusmaro Rivera
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dangerous Minds (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer Jerry Bruckheimer said a disastrous test screening left "maybe 10 people" in the audience, after which the filmmakers spent nearly a year reworking the film, including changes in editing and tone.
- The film is based on the 1992 autobiography My Posse Don't Do Homework by retired U.S. Marine LouAnne Johnson, who in 1989 took a teaching job at Carlmont High School in Belmont, California, where most of her students came from the segregated, deprived city of East Palo Alto.
- Adding Coolio featuring L.V.'s "Gangsta's Paradise" was a turning point that helped drive the film's commercial success; Bruckheimer compared the song's role to that of "Flashdance... What a Feeling" by Irene Cara in Flashdance.
- Roger Ebert called the film "less than compelling" in the Chicago Sun-Times and said the true story had been watered down to appeal to white audiences, illustrated by the substitution of Bob Dylan songs for rap songs.
- Coolio won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance for his vocals, and the "Gangsta's Paradise" video, featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Rap Video and the award for Best Video from a Film.
