Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

bkoganbing I'm sure we'll see another version of Inherit The Wind with some of the players of a new generation. This story about religion being written into the civil law is sadly not out of style.When the first version that starred Spencer Tracy and Fredric March came out it was heralded as the Broadway play it was based on. But in 1960 it was looked on as look back to another era where we presumably learned of the folly of imposing religious views on the body politic. I don't think anyone thought that the religious right would reawaken and become the force it has. Not in 1999 when this film came out or when another version that starred Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards, Jr. was made in 1988. All three versions have a chilling timeliness about them now.Tom Everett Scott is the high school biology teacher who violates a newly passed law making the teaching of Charles Darwin's The Origin Of The Species a crime. He's the first charged under this new Tennessee statute and three times presidential candidate Matthew Harrison Brady modeled on William Jennings Bryan volunteers to be on the prosecution team. Of course that generates a lot of publicity and Henry Drummond based on Clarence Darrow is brought in to defend. In the original film Fredric March really got the Bryan character down pat. But George C. Scott is a fascinating Matthew Harrison Brady. Certainly the most fanatical of the group. Then again few actors could get as intense as George C. Scott.Jack Lemmon is a more relaxed and low key Henry Drummond. He was not in real life as noble a character as Spencer Tracy played him in 1960. Jason Robards, Jr. in the 1988 film was the closest to the real Clarence Darrow. But closer than Robards is Orson Welles as Jonathan Wilk from the 1959 film Compulsion based on the Leopold/Loeb murder case. Of course the highlight in the film and the real trial itself is the confrontation when Drummond(Darrow) calls Brady(Bryan) as an expert witness on the Bible. Then as now how willfully ignorant Lemmon shows Scott to be. Not just ignorant but determinedly so and determined to keep all views but his own out of our educational system.I can hardly wait for this oft told tale to be told again. Till then this and the other version are to be seen and seen again.

er1067 Take two of the finest actors of modern times; put them in a screenplay with one of the finest scripts ever written; produce it through a cable channel that is renown for generating excellent movies, what you get has to be great. Fantastic. Superb! It stunk. I order a hamburger with more feeling than the actors showed mechanically reading their lines. I don't care where you stand on the core issue of this story, and I don't care if the story followed the real trial. That's irrelevant. The story is the story, and it's a great one. It's great, that is, when Spencer Tracy, Fredrick March, and Gene Kelly perform it. It compares like coal to diamonds with Lemmon, Scott, and Bridges in the all too dim spotlight. If you really want to feel the impact of this play, see the original. This is one case where filmdom didn't evolve a better product.

Ralph Michael Stein To see the two great actors, George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon, in this drama is worth being subjected to the greatly sentimentalized and wholly ahistorical script. This film has little to say about the real "Scopes Monkey Trial" and the citizens of the town where it took place are crudely caricatured as only script writers and directors unfamiliar with the South can do. The original Spencer Tracy film remains the best but this remake is worth seeing too.

peacham I have never seen a poor adaptation of this great American Classic,however if I were to choose the worst adaptation out of a good bunch this recent adaptation would qualify. George C. Scott made a very good Matthew Brady,However He was masterful in the role of Henry Drummond on Broadway in 1997.Jack Lemmon was merely adequate in Scott's stage role of Drummond and the two never seemed to make a connection the way Scott and Charles Durning did on stage,or the way Spencer Tracy and Frederick March did on screen. Beau Bridges was a fine,sarcastic E.K. Hornbeck and Lane Smith was a powerful hypocrite as Rev. Brown. The pace of this recent adaptation was slow and not as exciting as previous film versions. It was worth watching but not nearly as satisfying as the 1960 film or the Broadway revival.