I could really appreciate the artistic passion and musicality of this film although just watching what Neiman goes through made me pretty tense. The idea of the film is great, sort of like a very extreme 'Glee' or 'Fame', but I think that it is actually a bit too extreme. Their are times where I feel that Fletcher should have seen what he was doing and laid off a bit. His behaviour was so abhorrent, even without these moments, that his teaching practices should have been called in to question anyway. It would have worked better then, because that is where it became unbelievable in my eyes. I'm sure that there are many teachers of a similar ilk out there, but I'm not convinced that they would ever get away with that abuse for so long.

A tamer version could work really well and might actually resemble an episode of 'Glee' or 'Fame', but I don't think it would need to be dumber down too much and could really get the point across without giving the audience anxiety on Neiman's behalf.

The actors all do a very good job. J.K. Simmons is the obvious stand out performer, but Miles Teller puts in a lot of hard work too.

I like the lighting of the film, I think the darkness references the hard times for Neiman and the Jazz music is just superb.

It's an odd one, because in some weird way I did enjoy it, but it was hard to digest at the same time.