All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Based upon James Hilton's excellent novella of the same name, "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is a now-overlooked masterpiece of both comic and dramatic filmmaking. Telling the tale of a life well lived, this is a heartfelt character study produced with the utmost excellence. Directed by underrated classic filmmaker Sam wood (the director of "A Night at the Opera", another one of my *FAVORITE*, and I do not use that term lightly, films of all time) the tender classic is adapted well to the screen. Both works are equal in quality, as Hilton's wonderful and witty writings come to life with even more depth than they originally contained. The cast all delivers marvelous performances, and even the numerous child actors are realistic and delightful to watch (something too rarely seen in the movies, especially back in 1939!). Of course, the main attraction (in terms of acting, anyway) is the leading performance by classical Hollywood celebrity Robert Donat. Donat embodies the unforgettable character of Mr. Chips with all of the humor and melancholy desperately required for the role. sometimes he comes across as a bumbling, goofy old man, and at other times he comes across as a sweet and sensitive lover. This film traces the highlights of his career as a schoolteacher and it does so in a way that made tears flow from my eyes like a steady stream (of embarrassment) and laughter fly from my throat like a speeding train (similes are hard to think of sometimes, okay?). Anyway, the point is: go see this movie, it is at once hilarious, heartwarming, sad, and, in the end, truly hopeful and surprisingly inspiring. The acting is great on all fronts (I did not even mention the lovely Greer Garson, whose performance makes her character as charming and likable as she is beautiful) and the story is adapted in such a way that the original story is not at all ruined and is, instead, made even better! After forcing any possible reader to struggle through my parenthesis addiction (see, I just did it again!), I can only ask that you all forgive me and run out to read the classic novella and immediately view this beautiful and comic film adaptation. Those who bare sensitive souls and healthy hearts will surely lack any disappointment and leave the film with tears in their eyes and a smile on their face!

Channel surfing on a Sunday afternoon found me watching this movie for about the 6th time in my life and this is one of those films that I have to watch all the way through rather than move on. They just don't make movies like this anymore.A lot of reviews of this movie will talk about how the time-line of the film isn't historically accurate but personally, I don't care if a movie matches up with history if the story itself is compelling enough to hold me - the overall story here is definitely what is important.Essentially, this is a story about change - the young teacher at the start of the movie is a totally different person to the one at the end. At the start, he has a firm stand on how he must assert his authority over the children he teaches but as his story progresses, he softens as he comes to understand that life is about more than blindly following the rules.It is through his younger wife that he learns that flexibility is the best way to deal with his charges and throughout the movie, we see him soften his approach through the years. By the end of the film, he has become the most respected teacher/master at Brookfield.Robert Donat gives a magnificent performance as Mr Chips and, despite his relatively young age (34), plays the role as the aged school master brilliantly. Chips is a man who desperately wants to impart his knowledge to his students but must learn that teaching is an art that is learned on the job rather than through theory and, in his performance, Donat portrays a man who is worldly unwise opening himself up to a new way of seeing things.Greer Garson has what appears to be a more subdued role to play but clearly she is the brains behind the changes to Mr Chips. She falls in love with a man she met in the mist on a mountain and managed to draw out the humanity in him once they married. She throws Chips in the deep end on the first day of the new school term and shows him that there is more to teaching than books and facts.Garsons performance is subtle but powerful - here is a woman who sees potential and forces its hand. Donat certainly manages to play the part of not fully understanding he is being manipulated into becoming a better person.Goodbye Mr Chips is a movie from the golden years of Hollywood - a time when originality and story telling was more important than making money. It is a simple movie that tells a story - that's it. Even though I have seen it numerous times, I still get a tear in my eye at that certain point in the movie that I won't spoil here - if you watch it, you will know what I mean.My advice is that you see this movie.

This version of Mr Chips, the original, is regarded as the classic, but I prefer the 1969 version, starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark. Similar plot to both, though the 1969 tweaked the events in Mr Chips' life, to match world history. The 1939 version is good, and particularly emotional, especially towards the end. However, it does feel stuffy and stiff. That may just be a function of the era in which it was made and the era it was portraying. One plus the 1939 version has over the 1969 one is that it isn't a musical, but then that may just be me - I generally don't like musicals!Performances are OK. Greer Garson shines as Katherine and deserved her Best Actress Oscar nomination. However, I don't know how Robert Donat got the Best Actor Oscar. His performance is OK, but not brilliant. I often found him a bit irritating, in fact. Overly wooden (though his character was such). Yet he managed to beat out Clarke Gable's performance in Gone with the Wind and James Stewart's in Mr Smith Goes to Washington...Worth seeing, but if you have to choose, see the 1969 version instead.

If you watch this expecting a kind of topical biography of a teacher at an English school for boys, a gentle and unspectacular story, with romance, a growing acceptance of one's fate, and a lot of sentiment, you'll get what you expect.They run these sort of movies out from time to time. "It's a Wonderful Life," "Mr. Holland's Opus," "The Long Grey Line." The narratives tend to span generations. I found this one rather interesting and it's not surprising that it received so much public acclaim that Michael Redgrave was able to do a loony impression of Robert Donat's Mr. Chips in "The Lady Vanishes." You can't help liking it.Donat begins his teaching career as a nervous wreck, uncertain and stiff. But then he runs into Greer Garson in an improbable setting. Their marriage brings him a bit of ego strength. Of course, Garson (and the baby she's been carrying) have to die in order to boost the ratio of sentiment to everything else.Donat has one funny moment -- aside from his awkwardness. The Headmaster wants him to switch from the received pronunciation of Latin, in which "c" is pronounced "see", to the new modified and older version in which "c" is pronounce like "k". By this time, the middle-aged Mr. Chips has become defiantly laggard, declares hotly that he will never bring himself to pronounce Cicero as Kikero, and storms out the door.Yet, it's far from a comic story. If you like love, romance, tragedy, small triumphs, you'll love it.