Good Will Hunting

Hats off to Affleck and Damon and their smart and emotionally powerful script, the Oscar is very well deserved. During the scene where Robin Williams speaks to Damon on the park bench, I am always amazed at the power of Williams's monologue. (13.06.2002)

I’m not at all shocked that Robin Williams got an Oscar for the psychiatrist role. Each word coming out of his mouth was pure wisdom and it was hard not to listen to him and enjoy his performance all at the same time. But Matt Damon and Ben Affleck also surprised me – and at a time when nobody expected it from them, too. They both had hair like boy band members and they were full of youth, and yet they managed to write such an amazing script full of truth. The scene where Will Hunting gets mad at oil companies at a job interview really did it for me. (15.08.2014)

Ganz nett haben es hie dir Hübschen verfasst, eben zwar recht schön an der Oberfläche und dort, wo Psychologie nicht genug war, haben sie es mit einem bewährten Satz wie "folge deinem Herzen" versucht. Aber am Ende bietet dieses Drama über die Suche nach dem Sinn des Lebens auch eine ziemlich bewegende Lösung. Außerdem hat hier Van Sant Regie geführt, gefühlvoll und mit viel Platz für exzellente Schauspieler ... Obwohl Good Will Hunting wie simple Limonade sprudelt, kann der Film unterhaltsam sein und dezent eingreifen. (09.06.2009)

Psychological-romantic delicacy, which caught me off guard at the age of fourteen and I thought about it for a long time and identified with Will. Later, I abandoned the uncritical worship, but I will always admire the idea of two young guys who subscribed to a Hollywood career with their life's work. However, the best thing about this movie remains Robin Williams' life role. (27.05.2006)

Americans love stories about talented outsiders who have managed to succeed, and the whole world loves touching stories that skillfully manipulate our emotions. Good Will Hunting fulfills both of these criteria and shows why Hollywood is called the dream factory. It has nothing to do with real life, but it is enjoyable to watch and is a nicely cast film with decent direction, and above all, a screenplay that fully meets the requirements for a box office hit. I won't give it five stars because it is too artificial, but I also can't go below 4 stars. Overall impression: 75%. (19.01.2012)

Who wouldn't like this already legendary, beautifully worn-out industrial 90's art piece full of wholesome intellectual depth, enjoyable philosophy, and quality psychological analysis of smart people? The boys grew up and played with the script very skillfully. Although there is a bit of unnecessary brevity (which makes the final catharsis harder to digest) and sometimes emotions are missing, it is still a great thing for the young hope of Hollywood at the time, and it is impossible not to love the "independent movie makers feeling". Nowadays, it's not as cool as it used to be, but in terms of content and message, it has practically not aged at all. (21.06.2014)

It's been mentioned here many times, but the script is simply unprecedented for two people so young. The dialogues between Matt Damon and Robin Williams are amazing, they blew me away and I just believed them. The film itself may not have wowed me as much as I might have expected, but thanks to the wonderful soundtrack, the performances (especially Damon’s) and last but not least the idea itself, it definitely deserves at least a little place in my heart. (03.07.2012)

Such clever boys. At an age when I was writing love ballads to my teenage sweethearts and gasping for breath with socialism, Damon and Affleck came up with a truly adult script that opens up a whole range of themes glossing over a somewhat extreme example of the actually inevitable step towards adulthood, however much that means freeing oneself from selfish freedoms at the expense of a certain uniformity and generally discernible motivations such as acknowledging one's place in society or making sacrifices on the altar of love. What they’ve bitten off, however, is quite a mouthful for the two burly guys, as there are actually four storylines in the film (Damon-Williams, Damon-Driver, Damon-Affleck, and Williams-Skarsgard), even if they’re all tied to a single denominator, but especially the one depicting the slacker resignation of the Boston suburbs (the bottom of which is so perfectly portrayed by Harmony Korine in a brief cameo – heh heh you gotta love this guy), it's all too obvious that the film needs it, especially at the beginning and the end. In between, it just has to keep it alive through more or less comic scenes. Where I would have given Oscar nods like crazy would have been in the case of Minnie Driver, that girl is unreal, she defies the usual femme fatale stereotypes, clearly her character has a life outside her scenes and her relationship with Damon gets the strongest sequences, among them the excellent bed dialogue, shot only in close-ups with subdued lights, where the camera work and editing make spatial orientation impossible, reminding you of those stormy weekends when it's raining outside and you don't even know what time it is. (16.03.2018)

I enjoyed the film a lot more than the first time I saw it. Plus, I had some good laughs watching the scenes with Ben Affleck, whose face was clenched like a person's rectum. It was a good story, you could tell that the creators put effort into it, which means I wasn’t hit by a tsunami of pathos. 4*+ (12.08.2020)