The sort of movie that one is practically required to describe as “inspirational,” The Great Debaters boasts a handful of soaring moments and a few crackling sequences, but is nonetheless a tad too predictable. Denzel Washington (who also directed) stars as real-life college professor, poet, and debate coach Melvin B. Tolson, whose debate team at Wiley College, a small university with an exclusively African-American student body, defeated the mighty USC in a titanic 1935 contest. Not surprisingly, the film takes substantial liberties with the facts—such as pitting Wiley against Harvard rather than USC—and replaces several real debate-team members with obvious composite characters created by screenwriter Robert Eisele to facilitate the storytelling. But the film is essentially true, which is good enough for Hollywood. Jurnee Smollett, Nate Parker, and Denzel Whitaker (no relation to supporting player Forest Whitaker) are excellent as Tolson's prodigies, but Washington carries the day with his bravura performance. A strong optional purchase. [Note: Available in both a single-disc and a two-disc collector's edition, DVD extras on the latter include “A Historical Perspective” featurette (23 min.), the 22-minute “Learning the Art: Our Young Actors Go to Debate Camp” featurette, “A Heritage of Music” featurette (12 min.), an 11-minute featurette on the score with composers James Newton Howard and Peter Golub, “A New Generation of Actors” cast featurette (10 min.), “The Production Design of David J. Bomba” (9 min.), “The 1930's Wardrobe of Sharen Davis” (6 min.), five minutes of deleted scenes, “Forest Whitaker on Becoming James Farmer, Sr.” costar featurette (4 min.), the music videos “That's What My Baby Likes” and “My Soul Is a Witness” featuring Sharon Jones, text poetry by Melvin B. Tolson, and trailers. Bottom line: a whopping extras package for a solid film.] (E. Hulse)
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