'Whiplash': An instructor's 'tough love' is more disturbing than anything
鈥淲hiplash,鈥� a big Sundance fave this year, is about a drumming prodigy, Andrew Neyman (Miles Teller), who tangles with Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the fearsome jazz conservatory instructor whose elite ensemble he desperately wants to join. Terence is such a bullying terror, and his scenes with Andrew are so vehement, that some people have taken to calling the film 鈥淔ull Metal Juilliard.鈥�
I don鈥檛 get the enthusiasm for this movie, written and directed by Damien Chazelle, which is such a cooked-up piece of claptrap that I half expected Darth Vader to pick up the baton. We鈥檙e supposed to think that Terence鈥檚 tough love is more 鈥渉onest鈥� than the usual pussyfooting tutelage, but in any sane society this guy would have been brought up on charges long ago. Grade: C (Rated R for strong language including some sexual references.)
