DE Special Projects Editor

Forrest Gump had a baby and called him Mr. Holland.

Not only in its storyline, but also in the way this sentimentel-tear-jerking movie moves through time, Mr Holland’s Opus tries to win audiences by weaving in the most significant events of the past 30 years along with the story of a focal person, like Gump. But in this case it is a man and his love for music.

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Audiences will see the same faces in Holland as they did in Gump. Both movies have the Kennedy assassinations. Both have the Nixon resignation. Both have the senseless death of a young, sweet, naive African-American soldier in the Vietnam War. Both play off of John Lennon’s death. Both have a Jackson Browne song on their soundtracks. But Gump had them first, which leaves Holland far behind, in second place, in a race of two.

But despite these similarities, Holland somehow manages to start on a promising note. The movie follows the life of music enthusiast Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss), who dreams but fails to become a rich and famous composer. To pay the bills, he takes a job as a high school music teacher.

Soon after, he and his wife Iris(Gleane Headley) have a baby who is born deaf. From that point on, Holland believes he will never be able to teach his love of music to his son. However, he can still teach it to his students, whom he ends up spending more time with.

In addition, Holland refuses to learn sign language which not only creates a barrier between he and his son but also between he and his wife who has been weighted by the burden of raising their son almost single handily.

The movie hits an emotional high when Holland’s son tells him that even though he cannot hear music, it still has a significant meaning in his life. Holland then makes too swift of a transition from bad guy to good guy without any evolution in between. This creates a disjointed chop that stops the flow of the movie.

Until this point, the movie moves smoothly but slowly. It is filled with many small packages of feel-good and feel-bad segments that manage to keep viewers interested enough to watch until the end.

Dreyfuss gives one of the best performances of his life. He makes the transition from a young ambitious musician (where make-up makes Dreyfuss look as young as he did he did in Jaws) to an old complacent teacher who has found a love for teaching that he did not feel in his younger years.

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Holland is a simple movie. It has too simple of a plot and storyline to win the hearts of all who see it. But Dreyfuss will most definitely win an Oscar for this movie.

And even though the movie tackles the important issue of the disappearing arts, the movie’s only chance of winning awards itself, relies solely on Dreyfuss’ performance, which shines bright. But his performance aside, the movie expects too much from its audiences.