New Detachment Trailer: Adrien Brody Tangles with Dangerous Minds

In the new trailer for Detachment -- the latest entry in the teachers-are-big-ole-saints genre of filmmaking, Adrien Brody plays a teacher who has not spent all his life living in a gangsta’s paradise. That’s where the conflict is. He wants to help his group of troubled students, but he can barely get them to sit down, let alone listen up. The execution looks charming enough, and the movie fared well at Tribeca, so let’s indulge director (and showman) Tony Kaye’s vision and dig this new group of Freedom Writers.

All the requisite tropes are in place: martyr classroom demeanor, a couple of emotional conniptions, students who don’t care about their grades, personal attacks waged against the teacher, and best of all, the possibility of a weird romance between instructor and student. Sandy Dennis mastered this in Up the Down Staircase, y’all. And Adrien Brody emitted more personality with his cameo as Salvador Dali in Midnight in Paris than he does in this entire movie, but I can’t deny the crowd-pleasing (and pretty crazy) nature of this story. Let’s watch The Pianist get pissed.

Verdict: Ehhh, what the hell, enroll me.