Good Will Hunting Movie Review

And I reiterate, I need to review more older movies, and I just watched this on Netflix for the first time this weekend, so I figured its as good a place as any to start.

No spoilers, don't worry.

So Good Will Hunting stars Matt Damon; he's janitor at MIT named Will Hunting who didn't go to college, lives in South Boston, and gets drunk with his best friend Ben Affleck every night; basically, he's a white trash nobody. But here's the thing: he's super genius. He sees math equations three other people in the world can solve and cranks out an answer within minutes. Peter Skarsgard plays a professor who catches onto this, so he has his underachieving community college professor friend Robin Williams give Will some therapy so he can move on with his life. And we have our movie... er, well, parts of it.

So, is this movie good? Hell yeah. I'll start with the performances. So, first off you've got Matt Damon kicking ass as Will. In the year 2012, it's really not necessary to say Matt Damon did a good job in a movie because he's Matt Damon, you know, probably the best actor working today other then Bryan Cranston or Gary Oldman. But this was 1997 (year I was born! Woo!), Matt Damon was not Jason Bourne yet, and he still had yet to prove himself truly as an actor, which he does in this movie. Will is a more relatable character then you'd think, too; yeah he's a white trash super genius who's yet to do anything with his life (think Doctor House if he were white trash), but he's going through something we've all been through at some point: asking himself what the hell he's doing with his life. Come on, we've all been there. And they do a great job at that. Add in that Will's funny and kind of a BAMF, and you've got a great protagonist.

The other performances were awesome, too. It's hard to say who really steals the show, just because everyone's so good in this movie, but my first choice for that's Robin Williams. He does so well as his character, and his character is awesome too. His character is the kind of guy we all hope we can be: he's happy with his life and the choices he's made, even though it hasn't all worked out for him and he hasn't been as successful as he could've been. And then you've got Ben Affleck: first, his character is named Chucky. That in itself is funny, then just add in how freaking hilarious he is in this movie. He's also the ideal best friend, too, because even though he's always screwing up, he has Will's best interest at heart. They make pretty much everyone else relevant, too, like the professor and even Will's girlfriend's a complex character. That's the beauty of it, really: they feel like people and not archetypes.

One of the things I love most about this movie is the idea behind, which they do a great job of showing without force feeding it to the audience, something lots of movies and shows stumble over. That idea is that when you have a gift, a lot of the time there's a difference between what you're "supposed" to do and what you actually want to do, hence Will not being particularly inclined to take up any of the jobs he's being offered. At the same time, the movie does a great job with the flip side of that: a lot of the time, there's also a difference between what you want and what you owe to yourself. That's another thing where we've all been there, and I love stuff like that.

Another huge thing in this is the script, which won the Oscar for best original screenplay, and that really shows, especially in the dialogue. The dialogue isn't only realistic, but it's just plain awesome, and a lot of the time hilarious. I've said hilarious a lot in this review, so I'm starting to get scared that I'm sending the wrong message. So let me make it clear: this is a drama with comedic moments, not a funny. It can be kinda heavy sometimes too, and a bit slow. That's my only beef with the movie actually, that it can be a kind of slow sometimes, but that's where the great dialogue comes in handy. Plus, I need to watch slow movies once in awhile to prove to myself that I can watch things that don't have explosions.

So, Good Will Hunting is on Netflix Instant right now, and you should all go watch it because it's awesome. Seriously, IMO this is one of the best dramas ever made, or at least that I've ever seen. Because it's awesome.

In the end, I saw Good Will Hunting, and their was much rejoicing.