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"Lean on Me" opens with a brief sequence showing Clark starting out at a well-run Eastside High in the 1960s, alienating his principal and being transferred out. It continues 20 years later, with Clark more-or-less happily teaching in a good school in a nice neighborhood.
68% Tomatometer 19 Reviews 85% Audience Score 25,000+ Ratings In this fact-based film, a New Jersey superintendent, Dr. Frank Napier (Robert Guillaume), watches helplessly as East Side High ...
- (19)
- Biography, Drama
- PG-13
Inspirational drama has language, violence, drug references. Read Common Sense Media's Lean on Me review, age rating, and parents guide.
User Reviews. Freeman is perfectly cast as "Crazy" Joe Clark, a radical, newly appointed principal at a gradually deteriorating, gang-ridden Jersey high school who tries to get through to his students with a tough, opinionated, no-nonsense approach to the pursuit of academic excellence.
Joe Clark's tough love philosophy plays into the pernicious respectability that plagues so many black communities- that discipline and assimilation will guarantee safety and success. Full Review...
Mar 3, 1989 · Lean on Me: Directed by John G. Avildsen. With Morgan Freeman, Beverly Todd, Robert Guillaume, Alan North. The dedicated but tyrannical Joe Clark is appointed the principal of a decaying inner-city school he is determined to improve by any and all means.
Like most simplifications, Lean On Me's genially despotic approach has its attractions, and it works fine as a movie. Simplification worked fine in Rocky and in The Karate Kid, too, but unlike those essentially simple films, Lean On Me oversimplifies a very complex issue.
Feb 1, 1989 · Lean on Me. Morgan Freeman's inspired performance as Joe Clark, the New Jersey principal who uses controversial methods to clean up a drug- and crime-ridden high school, makes it easier to...
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 68%, based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 5.8/10. [1] On Metacritic the film has an average score of 58 out of 100 based on 13 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [2]
Lean on Me Review. Asked to return to principle a school from which he had been fired, an unorthodox teacher takes matters into his own hands with a controversial - but effective - mode of...
