Mona Lisa Smile

"Mona Lisa Smile" tries hard to be too much — actually, it tries to be everything to everyone. But it winds up becoming a whole lot of nothing.

This ineffectual, touchy-feely drama — essentially a Lifetime cable-channel movie with better production values and a name cast — is trying to pass itself off as quasi-feminist rhetoric, when it does as much as it possibly can to undercut those messages. There are also too many obvious similarities to "The Dead Poet's Society," "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" and "To Sir, With Love," better films that employed at least a little subtlety.

Meanwhile, star Julia Roberts simply gives the same standard performance we've come to expect — she laughs, she cries and she has at least one slapstick pratfall. It's nothing new, and frankly, she's capable of much more.

And so is the rest of the cast.

Roberts plays Katherine Watson, a free-spirited art-history professor who lands at Wellesley College during the early 1950s. Having come straight from Berkeley, the conservative attitudes of the all-girl New England institution come as a huge shock.

Katherine is also surprised by the reaction she gets during her first day on the job; her students pretty much know everything she plans to teach and look down their noses at her.

Instead of quitting, however, Katherine decides to challenge both the students and the status quo. And while some of her ideas about female empowerment find receptive ears, they also might cost her the job.

Blaming Roberts solely for this misfire would be unfair, since many others contribute poor efforts. Among them is director Mike Newell, who can't quite decide what tone the film should have.

For the most part "Mona Lisa Smile" is played entirely too seriously. In fact, the funniest thing here is the laughably haughty accent from co-star Julia Stiles, as patrician as ever playing one of Katherine's students.

Not that the rest of the cast is any better. The only person who escapes unscathed is Maggie Gyllenhaal, solid as always in an underwritten supporting role.

"Mona Lisa Smile" is rated PG-13 for crude sexual talk (use of slang terms), scattered use of strong profanity, glimpses of nude artwork, brief drug content (discussion and use of contraceptives) and use of some ethnic slurs. Running time: 114 minutes.

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