When she decided to produce and star in Mona Lisa Smile, Julia Roberts probably had visions of a second Oscar dancing in her head.

For good reason.

There's this tradition in Hollywood that if an actor plays a teacher who bucks the system and inspires students to seize the day, follow their dreams or join revolutions they get an Oscar nomination if not the little statue itself.

Robert Donat nabbed the Oscar in 1940 for Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Richard Dreyfuss and Robin Williams got nominated for their portrayals of inspirational educators in Mr. Holland's Opus and Dead Poets Society.

It's not just male teachers who make a big at awards shows, as Maggie Smith proved with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie the film which Mona Lisa Smile apes at every turn.

Jean Brodie was teaching young girls about art, politics and love at an Edinburgh school shortly after the First World War.

She wanted her students to liberate their bodies and minds.

Katherine Watson (Roberts) uses her art history classes, at Wellesley college in 1953, to teach young women that their place is in colleges not the home and that they should be married to careers, not husbands.

Both teachers are eventually betrayed by one of their students, and both teachers learn they have failed to live by their own precepts, so they have a lot more living and learning to do themselves.

Smith was blessed with Jay Presson Allen's insightful and biting screenplay.

Poor Roberts is saddled with melodramatic mush from Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal, who previously collaborated on such fare as The Beverly Hillbillies, Mighty Joe Young and Planet of the Apes.

Katharine, who was educated at Berkley, is supposedly shocked when she discovers the students at Wellesley are more interested in relationships than academics.

This is the same woman who dumps her fiancee when he flies in to visit her over the Christmas vacation so she can hop into bed with Bill Dunbar (Dominic West), the Italian professor who has a notorious reputation for sleeping with his students.

The implication is that because Wellesley is such a hot bed of premarital sex, Katharine doesn't want to be tied down herself.

Shortly after Katharine arrives, the school nurse is fired because she instructs students on birth control.

Because there is never a hint of a pregnancy dilemma at the school, the suggestion is that the school administrators were right in assuming that their girls didn't need to know about birth control

Whenever the script bogs down in such nonsense, Roberts lets her hair down and lets loose her magical throaty laugh.

Alas, this time it's not enough to save her performance or the movie.

The best performances come from Julia Stiles as the girl who must choose between Yale and a marriage proposal and Kirsten Dunst as the vicious rich girl who wants everyone to be as miserable as she is.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is excellent as the promiscuous student who counts teachers and administrators among her conquests, but Gyllenhaal looks more like one of the teachers than a student.

Mona Lisa Smile which is set in 1953 feels less like a period piece than it does like one of the contrived and corny melodramas from that era.

(This film is rated PG)

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