Product Description: Academy Award®-winner Michael Caine (Best Actor in a Supporting Role TheCider House Rules 1999 Best Actor in a Supporting Role Hannah and Her Sisters 1986) along with Julie Walters earned well-deserved 1983 Oscar® nominations (Best Actor and Best Actress respectively) for their outstanding performances in this brilliant bittersweet comedy. Walters is Rita a working-class woman seeking the path to self-discovery. Bored with her life as a hairdresser and under pressure from her husband to start a family she enrolls in literature tutorials at a British university determined to better herself. Caine is FrankBryant the disillusioned English professor who is assigned to teach her. While Frank watches Rita embark on a radical transformation his own life takes on a different kind of transformation as he finds himself falling in love with Rita while sinking into the depths of his alcoholism. Earning a third Oscar® nomination for its screenplay by William Russell (based on his play) Educating Rita is a very funny very charming and thoroughly entertaining film.System Requirements:Run Time: 111 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG UPC: 043396078987 Manufacturer No: 07898
Amazon.com essential video: Michael Caine and the knockout Julie Walters deliver a pair of wonderful performances in this endearingly bittersweet tale of a boozily burnt-out professor's tutoring of (and subsequent tutoring by) a free-spirited cockney hairdresser determined to improve her lot in life. The basic plot won't exactly surprise anyone who's ever seen a movie before, but the ace cast (particularly Caine, who's rarely this subtle) continually finds new directions to spin off from the rather rote path. Although the end result is perhaps just a little too convinced of its own adorability to attain classic status, this remains a rarity in the genre--a feel-good film that earns its emotions honestly. A nice change of pace for director Lewis Gilbert, who is perhaps better known for his contributions to the James Bond series. --Andrew Wright
An Excellent Movie It's intelligent, insightful, and very funny. Brilliant performances by Julie Walters and Michael Caine in a story that you wish was true. I see very little that can be improved here, and it's one of those very rare films that I'll put back on my little shelf to watch again later.
Educating Rita Educating Rita "Educating Rita" is in my personal top five movies of all time. Although labeled a romantic comedy I think that this movie is in a class by itself and defies categorization. I have a definite academic bent and this Oscar nominated, Lewis Gilbert directed, 1983 film still strikes a deep chord though I've watched it over and over.
Frank(Michael Caine), a divorced and bored-with-life alcoholic professor, just "happens" to be assigned as a personal tutor for the lovely vibrant working-class Rita(Julie Walters).
Rita shoots straight from the hip and is so lovely and full of life that she won't take no from Frank and thus starts her subtle metamorphosis from "uneducated" to "educated". However, in her process of transition Frank finds that he has created a monster, from his point of view(he refers to Shelley's Frankenstein), as Rita takes on the groomed academic veneer that she so desperately covets and Frank so openly despises.
During Rita's "education" a love subtly grows between the two and always lurks just below the surface. Rita is a "looker" and her natural beauty coupled with her delightful frankness sparks a constant longing inside of Frank.
This DVD begs the question...just what is real education? Is it the simple mouthing of academic platitudes from a learned and cultivated rote or is it lighting the spark of investigation inside of someone so that they may excel in life, and love? For the answer to that you need to buy this DVD or at least rent it somewhere :) and find out for yourself!
Don't get above your raising In Educating Rita, we find a woman, working as a hairdresser, who wants to better herself (played by Julie Walters). More than anything she wants to learn, not to put herself above family and friends, but from a desire to know, to see what else there is in the world that she can do and be.Unfortunately, everyone in her life finds the evolving Rita not to their liking, especially her husband.
Working and studying and coping with a husband who demands children are not easy for Rita. Things get particularly tense when the husband finds that she has been taking birth control pills behind his back. He burns her books (gifts from her tutor, Frank, played by Michael Caine) and her essay and forces her to decide if it's worth the effort after all. Not wanting to be trapped in a life in which she has never felt that she belongs, she pursues her studies, becoming more alienated in the process. Only Frank encourages her, in spite of his nearly constant alcoholic haze, and she finds her place among other students and while reading great literature, sometimes with her own quirky interpretations.
Even there, however, she doesn't quite fit in. Perhaps it's only in her own mind that she is not one with the academic world and those who reside there, but in the end she is happier and still yearning to learn.
This really is a marvelous story and one movie that any adult returning to school to pursue a degree should see. There are pitfalls and people who will try to discourage someone eager to gain that education. This movie is highly recommended.
BRILLIANT This flick, with it's small ensemble caught me by surprise on re-run TV, a few years after its release, and I never forgot it. I was never a Micheal Caine fan, and was new to Walters. She won me over instantly, and this is now my favorite movie of all time, really because of her perormance, and of course the story. Basically, It's Pygmaleon, reborn. A working class "My Fair Lady" so to speak. Rita, a hairdresser without an education signs on for a course at a university, in an attempt to better her life, against the wishes of her "women should be pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen" husband, Denny. Frank, a burnt out teacher with a penchant for whiskey, in overindulgence is her teacher. As the movie unfolds, He teaches her literature, she teaches him lessons in life. Eventually they both grow because of it. Rita in an attempt to change herself superficially, dubs herself Susan. She is a clean slate. Frank, Jaded and bitter, thinks she is better as the whimsical hairdresser, and balks at teaching her, in fear of her become like the other students he has. In the end he does, and she does change, but she also changes him. Her marriage crumbles because of her quest at rebirth, his career crumbles because of his drinking, and both are left with a new road ahead. It could have been so easy for another writer to have had them fall in love, have Frank to make the 100% turnaround (out of drunken-ness), that Rita makes of her life. But instead we get a more real ending. She has a new education, but an unsure future. He has a new future, but he may or may not still be a drunk. They both have a respect, and a frienship for one-another, and maybe a slight enamoration. In the end we are left with the sense they both will come out on top, but at the same time are not given the answers. Really a great watch for a rainy in the house night. The cast is great, you will be won over, and will watch this film repeatedly!
Outstanding This is probably one of the better movies I have seen in a long while. The whole story line is great as is the acting. Both characters are endearing. This is a great family movie.
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