The Great DebatersMovie Reviews

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Avg. Critic Score: 65 out of 100 Generally favorable reviews Metascore® based on all critic reviews
Information for Parents:
12 Iffy for 12+
Read Common Sense Media review

Critic scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more favorable reviews.

  • 100
    Chicago Sun-Times | Roger Ebert

    This is a film that is affirming and inspiring and re-creates the stories of a remarkable team and its coach. Read full review

  • 75
    San Francisco Chronicle | Walter Addiego

    An edifying and forthright drama that aims to create a lump in the throat, and succeeds. Read full review

  • 75
    Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

    The Great Debaters is like one of those sentimentally revved youth-sports-team crowd-pleasers. This time, though, the sport is debating, and the setting is an elite black college in Marshall, Tex., in 1935 Read full review

  • 70
    Washington Post | Stephen Hunter

    It's a great family movie, if not historically perfect, and something that a lot of people are going to like. Read full review

  • 70
    The Hollywood Reporter | Kirk Honeycutt

    An earnest drama about the search for self-esteem and sense of responsibility among young black people that successfully relies on its fine actors. Read full review

  • 70
    Los Angeles Times | Kenneth Turan

    Because it is so old-school Hollywood, with a weakness for standard moments and pat situations, The Great Debaters initially comes off as easily dismissible. Largely saving it from that fate is the presence and ability of Denzel Washington, who costars with Forest Whitaker and directs from Robert Eisele's script. Read full review

  • 70
    Wall Street Journal | Joe Morgenstern

    Mr. Washington is splendid, as always. So is Forest Whitaker as James Farmer, Sr. Read full review

  • 70
    Variety | Todd McCarthy

    Tailor-made for maximum inspirational, historical and educational impact, The Great Debaters shines a bright spotlight on a remarkable example of black achievement long forgotten in the sorry history of the Jim Crow South. Read full review

  • 63
    USA Today | Claudia Puig

    An enjoyable, rousing film, despite its formulaic quality. Read full review

  • 60
    The New York Times | Stephen Holden

    The wonder is that The Great Debaters transcends its own simplifying and manipulative ploys; it radiates nobility of spirit. Read full review

View more reviews for The Great Debaters on Metacritic

Information for Parents
Common Sense Media says Iffy for 12+ Inspiring true story confronts racism head-on.
What Parents Need to Know Parents need to know that this inspirational fact-based drama includes unvarnished discussions and representations of 1930s racism, including a brutal lynching scene (the victim's body is shown burned and hung). There are also a couple of fight scenes, a confrontation between rural white bullies and an African-American professor, and a scene in which a bloodied, beaten African-American prisoner has been abused by white sheriff. A sex scene is brief and romantic (no graphic images). Language includes repeated uses of "hell" and the "N" word. Some drinking and pipe-smoking.
  • Families can talk about the appeal of movies based on true stories. What can today's viewers learn from seeing a movie like this? What messages do you think the film is hoping audiences will take away? What does this movie have in common with "underdog" sports stories? Families can also discuss how accurate they think the movie is. Why would filmmakers tweak any facts when making a movie based on a true story?
The good stuff
  • message true0 Positive messages: Debate team members are mostly determined and noble, though occasionally rebellious and raucous. Racists (including lynching party and the sheriff in Marshall) are especially villainous. Coach is complicated and smart.
What to watch for
  • violence false5 Violence: A central scene shows a lynching, with a burned, hanged African-American body and white lynchers (including a white child watching, undisturbed); the African-American debate team observes in horror, then drives away afraid. Early violence includes a bar fight. A car hits a hog, leaving it bloody and dead; the white men who own it threaten the African-American driver and his family. James finds Tolson at a union meeting; white men arrive with sticks and farm tools, chasing the farmers away, and Tolson leads James to safety. Prisoner held by sheriff appears with bloody, swollen eye. Henry and James fight briefly (Henry tells him that lynchers "cut your privates off" and "skin you alive").
  • sex false3 Sex: Henry flirts with a man's wife at a bar; women appear in close-fitting dresses, showing cleavage, sweating, and dancing suggestively. In a later scene, James watches Sam on dance floor and imagines dancing with her and her kissing him (sweetly). On a boat, Sam and Henry kiss; scene dissolves to sex in bed (romantic filtered light and close-ups). Henry kisses a girl he's picked up at a bar in front of Sam (it upsets her).
  • language false3 Language: Includes several uses of "hell" and the "N" word -- the latter both by racist characters and by Tolson, who uses it repeatedly during one "lesson" directed at Henry. Drunk and upset, Henry sings a song with the chorus "Run, n---er, run."
  • consumerism false0 Consumerism: Not an issue
  • drugsalcoholtobacco false3 Drinking, drugs and smoking: Drinking and drunkenness in bars (Henry is involved in these scenes). Henry, upset by the lynching, goes out drinking and comes home drunk. Tolson smokes a pipe.
An independent nonprofit dedicated to providing families the information they need to help kids thrive in a world of media and technology. © Common Sense Media Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.

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Dave White

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