For all its quirkiness, touching ad campaigns, and the physical beauty of its stars, "Good Will Hunting" is still a formulaic genre film. It's a movie cut from the mold of "Dead Poets Society," where the film's cloying desire to change EVERY viewer's life for the better seems to nestle up next to you in the theater and breathe down your neck for two hours. At times, this desire is positively invasive, and your face blushes from the movie's eagerness to please, move, and make the audience "think." As you might expect, there's not a lot of subtlety in this approach, though there can be if it's written properly. But when you've got a lead character who's the greatest math genius the world has known in a century, and his biggest problem is that he just doesn't know how to LOVE, you quickly come to realize that you're being beaten over the head with a rolled-up old newspaper of schmaltz and sentimentality.

Still, I liked "Good Will Hunting" quite a bit, maybe because sitting in a darkened theater waiting for twelve-foot-high people to change my life seemed like an appealing idea when I saw it. The script does lack subtlety in many spots, but also displays a tremendous depth in some scenes, specifically those focusing on Will Hunting (Matt Damon) and his tumultuous relationship with his therapist, Sean McGuire (Robin Williams). Williams is marvelous in his role as a community college psychiatry teacher who learns to overcome the death of his wife through his relationship with Will Hunting (which points toward another hallmark of the Life-Changing Film Genre: not only does the main character learn to live with himself and be a better person, but everyone that he knows, from the milkman to his parents, will also find their lives changed for the better by the end of the film). Robin should take his success in this role, and his Academy Award nomination for it, as a cue to avoid nasty scripts like "Jack" and to actively seek out more plum dramatic parts.

In general, the characters surrounding Will Hunting are more developed and interesting than Will himself. Skylar (Minnie Driver) is the girl Will fucks while he's learning how to love, and Chuckie (Ben Affleck) is the guy Will trades dirty jokes with while he's learning how to love. Both are excellent dramatic and comedic diversions while we wait for Will to finally learn how to love already, because we're starving and the popcorn ran out twenty minutes ago. Driver brings a wacky sincerity to her role, conveying a true affection for Will that is sexily hidden beneath a tough veneer of sarcasm and confidence. Affleck takes his station as the standard bestest friend character to a higher level through his deft balancing act between behaving as the guy who Will gets into fights with and the guy who cares a lot about what happens to his very close friend. You come to care about both of these characters enough that when Will inevitably shits on both of them before learning how to LOVE, you feel a genuine hurt and concern.

It's almost like "Good Will Hunting" tricks the viewer into caring about Will and his damn unlovable self through creating great supporting characters who care a lot about Will. You figure that if people this cool can be a friend or a lover to such a bland jerk-off, then it must be okay for you to care as well. Thus, when the inevitably poignant conclusion arrives and Will is driving off to California to be with the woman of his dreams, your thoughts turn not to Will but to the impact he's had on Sean McGuire, Chuckie, and Skylar. You're happy that he's forced Sean to start life again, that he's rewarded Chuckie's faith in him by doing the brave thing, and that he can finally return Skylar's love. But are you really that thrilled that Mr. Insensitive Genius has gotten his bit sorted out? Eh.

For the most part, Gus Van Sant stays out of the way on the directing end, putting together some beautiful shots of Boston and making good use of a recurring image of Will sitting alone on a moving train. This movie seems built from its screenplay anyway, so you can't blame him for taking a fairly bland point-and-shoot approach to the story. As the screenwriters of "Good Will Hunting," Affleck and Damon have put together a spotty but promising debut. When they hit the mark, they hit it squarely and in unexpected ways. But when they blow the mark to bits with a bazooka, it's barely worth the mental effort to put the pieces back together. Their biggest fault is that they just take Will's inability to love too far, and in doing so put their audience through a few too many emotional wringers. When Will just can't bring himself to tell Skylar that he loves her on the morning she leaves his life (for what we assume is forever), it's an emotional moment, but also a maddeningly stubborn and melodramatic one.

Which brings us to the film's star, Matt Damon. This guy's talented as hell, but he gives an uninspiring performance in "Good Will Hunting," perhaps because he doesn't have that much to do throughout the film except to look thoughtful and get angry every so often (until, of course, he LEARNS HOW TO LOVE! YAY!). The character is written as a vortex into which the other characters are sucked uncontrollably; there's this hope that they'll escape Will's pull and find other movies where they can do more interesting things than listen to Will bitch them out again and again. Unfortunately, they don't, and you have a bunch of really cool characters orbiting around a nearly blank slate.

Like so much of Hollywood's product these days, "Good Will Hunting" is one script draft and one courageous executive away from being truly GREAT. As it stands, there are flashes of brilliance in the writing and some excellent performances, but the pieces gel a bit too easily for both the audience and the performers. When Will drives off into the sunset at the end of the movie to be with the woman he loves, there's no sense that either the audience or the characters have earned such a happy ending, and the film as a whole suffers because of that. Still, I'll be DAMNED if this flick won't CHANGE YOUR LIFE! Darn tootin'.