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Higher Learning

1995

John Singleton

Laurence Fishburne, Kristy Swanson, Jennifer Connelly, Ice Cube ...

6.3

3,186

Drama The campus of fictitious Columbus University is a microcosm of America where people of every race, color, and creed come to learn. But students leave with a strategy to survive in this contemporary drama that chronicles a semester in the lives of a handful of students as they confront issues of identity, diversity, sexism, and escalating racial tensions.

	Author	Review
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"Everyone here, from beer-swilling white fraternity boys to rap-loving black students harassed by the campus police, can be judged at face value. Everyone is exactly what he or she seems."	NEG
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"[It] is often clichéd, unfocused and didactic. But Singleton has a goal most of his contemporaries have given up on: He wants to make a movie that makes a difference.	POS
United States	Desson Thomson The Washington Post	"For every persuasive insight John Singleton brings to 'Higher Learning', his thoughtful but flawed movie about multiculturalism and racism, he throws in something equally disappointing."	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"[Singleton] may be following, in some way, the threads of his own autobiography (...) He sees with a clear eye and a strong will, and is not persuaded by fashionable ideologies (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly	"Despite some likable performances (Epps is especially winning), the drama in 'Higher Learning' is constricted, hemmed in by Singleton's compulsion to view his characters as walking paradigms of racial and sexual politics."	NEG
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"[It] has a great many things on its mind, which immediately places it in a rather exclusive category of American films these days."	POS
United States	David Ansen Newsweek	"[It] sells its soul (and its brain) for overwrought melodrama."	NEG

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