Nov 21 2007 AM Poster Post: 'The Great Debaters' is Totally Inspirational

If that rich, golden hue of morning sun splashing across the face of Mr. Denzel Washington looks familiar, it's because that's the same soft dewdrop of sunlight seen in the poster to Remember the Titans. It is a special ray of sunshine that only comes out when Denzel is being inspirational, and will only kiss his delicate face. It's God's way of saying, "Hey, D-Dubs, keep making mediocre movies that make people feel good in a very generic, unspecific way."

Handsomeness to the over-40 crowd is next to godliness, as they say.

'The Great Debaters' Poster Premiere! [Cinematical]

Nov 6 2007 'The Great Debaters' Trailer is Non-Debatably Melodramatic

Having exhausted the options for high school sports, and probably shortly after Dead Poet's Society finally hit the top of his Netflix queue, Denzel Washington has devised a new, less exciting way to tell the story of an underdog African-American team in a racist time period: instead of football or whatever, how about a debate team?

The flaw in this, of course, is that a movie about a debate team is inherently pretty nerdy and uninteresting. Ask someone if they want to watch a feel-good movie about a debate team and, unless they were captain of their debate team, watch their eyes glaze over. (It might be difficult to tell, because their head will be shaking a violent negative.)

I appreciate that Denzel Washington is trying to document all of African-American history through excessive melodrama, but debate teams? After The Great Debaters, can we expected The Great Chess Players? The Great Hall Monitors? The Great Kids Who Had to Wheel Around the Overhead Projectors?

Or maybe the whole thing is just an excuse to finally cast a movie with Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker, and what I assume is a young, lab-created hybrid of the two, appropriately named Denzel Whitaker. Seriously.

The Great Debaters Trailer [Yahoo!]