I have a lot of nostalgia for this one! Were you even a teenager in the 90s if you did not like the movie Dangerous Minds and love the song Gangster’s Paradise by Coolio? Both the movie and the song were huge in 1995, and if you asked a 14 year old me to rate this movie, I am pretty sure I would have given it a 10/10 and the song at least a 70/10!
How to Dangerous Minds
Dangerous Minds was released on August 11, 1995. You can or stream the film from a digital platform. Click on the button at the end of this review and make your choice.
The Movie Review
The thing with nostalgia is that sometimes you watch something you loved as a kid, and it holds up, and you feel like a kid again watching it. Other times, you watch something you loved as a kid and find that it has not aged well or that, simply, you are too old to appreciate it the way you did in your younger years. Recently, I watched Dangerous Minds for the first time in many years, and I was kind of sad as it did not wow me or have the effect on me that I thought it would.
Michelle Pfeiffer as LouAnne Johnson
Hey, do not get me wrong, I still enjoyed it and I would certainly say that it is a good movie, but I did not think it was anywhere near as amazing as I did in my younger days. Still, with that being said, I would certainly say that Batman Returns) as LouAnne Johnson is one of her best and most memorable roles.
Dangerous Minds Plot Summary
The premise of the story is that LouAnne has left the military, and she is looking for a job. LouAnne applies for and gets the job at an inner city high school. This is a tough job, this school has a bad reputation, the pay sucks and those above her do not really seem to care all that much about the kids. Her first day at this high school is super rough as the kids just dismiss her, but she comes back the next day with a leather jacket and some fresh ideas.
Connecting with the Students
Before long. LouAnne manages to connect with the students, and she helps them learn and also believe in themselves. Not only that, she helps them see that their lives are not defined by the way they are now or the situation that they find themselves in. One of the more shocking things for me, watching this all these years later, was the black and Latino stereotypes that the movie had. To be fair, it was a product of its time, but if someone watching this for the first time in 2025 was shocked by it, I would not be all that surprised.
Dangerous Minds in Retrospect
I feeling like Dangerous Minds was a really gritty and hard hitting movie back in my teenage years. Watching it again now, some of the stuff is very cheesy and straight up ridiculous, but overall, I feel that the movie has a good heart, and at its core, it is about a woman who wants to reach and help these kids. That I think is a great message, and even if the movie is very, very “90s,” that message I think does still shine through. It may not be as great as teenage me thought, but this is still a good movie, and Gangster’s Paradise will never stop being a banger…. I may or may not be too old to use the term banger, but it is out there now.
