Teri Polo, who did a stint on
West Wing a couple of years back but is best known on the big screen for comedy, love interest, and comedic love interest (e.g., Meet the Fockers), is finally set to star in a movie that will not be a comedy. At least not intentionally. According to The Hollywood Reporter, in the indie film The Beacon, Polo’s character, Sally Helppie, and her husband move into an old apartment building while mourning the death of their young son. Sally begins seeing the spirit of another dead boy, and with the help of her college professor husband and his college professor friend, they try to save him. Save him from what undead dilemma, I know not, and I’m really not sure I care. If I wasn’t over the “I see dead people” phenomenon after all of the ghastly copycats riding the ghostly coattails of The Sixth Sense, trying to watch a season of The Ghost Whisperer did me in. (The things I do to catch Aisha Tyler.)
Anyway, the movie’s really not my point. Musing about the film, Cinematical.com’s Monika Bartyzel pointed out the almost magical abilities of college professors in film to do everything from exorcising spirits to helping people figure out that the little voice in their head narrating their day might actually be Emma Thompson and not a condition requiring heavy medication. This is a movie cliché I could have mentioned last week. As in the hallowed halls of academia itself, the guys usually bag the big roles, whether it’s an action flick like Indiana Jones (where knowledge is power) or a Dead Poets Society, one of those inspirational teacher movies that are a genre unto themselves. But occasionally we get a woman professor. In Mona Lisa Smile, a free-thinking arts teacher tries to change her students and society. Julia Roberts fared a little better than Robin Williams, though. Lower death toll.
I’d say The L Word‘s Dean Porter and Jodi Lerner qualify in the category of small screen unrealistic (despite my undergraduate fantasies) representations of university professionals. Their magical abilities? Fighting the conservative campus minority and shaping young minds through artistic expression and at times rather, er, inappropriate other means. And one I blame for the hours I spent digging plastic dinosaur bones out of my sandbox as a kid. Looking at the poster, I’d say the magic here wasn’t in the touching encounter between woman and dinosaur, but in the glory of the craptastic dinosaur animation. So what am I missing? Who are your favorite fictional profs?
