Michelle tries to teach a bunch of teenage rap fans in the mid-'90s about poetry by using Bob Dylan as her talking point, instead of, say, Tupac, because apparently people stopped writing song lyrics in the 1960s and she really only wants to reach out to these kids if she can do so without familiarizing herself with their interests on even a superficial level. It's like Stand and Deliver if Edward James Olmos tried to connect with Lou Diamond Phillips by speaking to him in nothing but quotes from the movie Grease.
Hollywood Pictures via YouTube
"'Shoot a homeboy.' This is how you cats jackjaw, right?"
Dangerous Minds was a big commercial hit but was almost universally derided by critics for taking an uplifting story about inner city kids and turning it into a movie about a bunch of improbably attractive juvenile assholes and their patronizing asshole teacher.
The Soundtrack:
The Dangerous Minds soundtrack album went triple platinum thanks to "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio, and almost 20 years later we still know all the words to that goddamn song. It was everywhere -- the video was in constant rotation on MTV, and it got played twice an hour on literally every radio station. I'm pretty sure Billy Graham's radio ministries were taking breaks to spin that jam. Everyone walking the planet in 1995 loved "Gangsta's Paradise."
MCA Records/Hollywood Pictures via YouTube
Although I am convinced the video's popularity had more to do with L.V.'s impassioned sweaty goldfish face.
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