Let’s be honest — there are few movies more hilariously out of their depth than Listen to Me, a film that tries to make collegiate debate as thrilling as a courtroom drama… and ends up playing like a dorm room improv night directed by a hungover soap opera director. This is the cinematic equivalent of assigning a term paper to a goldfish. Sure, it’s moving its lips, but you’re not getting anything meaningful out of it.
📚 The Plot (Barely)
A team of underdog debaters at fictional Kenmont College — including the dim Jason (Kirk Cameron) and the brainy-but-hot Monica (Jami Gertz, again playing a beautiful cipher) — find themselves in the national spotlight when they’re picked to debate one of America’s hottest topics: abortion. Yup. Nothing says date night like two kids arguing reproductive rights while their coach (Roy Scheider, slumming it) claps from the sidelines like a motivational gym teacher.
There are stakes, apparently. Political ones. Moral ones. But you’d never know it by the way this movie sleepwalks through its own urgency.
🗣️ Let’s Talk About Kirk Cameron
At the time, Kirk Cameron was TV’s golden boy. Charismatic, clean-cut, vaguely smug — the kind of guy your mom trusted and your girlfriend secretly had a poster of. But in Listen to Me, he delivers his lines like he’s been hypnotized into thinking he’s still on the set of Growing Pains. This man is supposed to be a scholarship kid from a tough background, and yet he argues like he’s defending the price of frozen yogurt at a city council meeting.
He’s not bad so much as… unconvincing. Like a robot playing a motivational speaker. He wears the same expression whether he’s talking about ethics or trying to get laid.
🎤 Debate Me, Bro
The movie treats debate like it’s the Super Bowl of academia, complete with training montages, emotional breakthroughs, and that classic trope of “coach with a dark past.” Roy Scheider brings all the gravity of a guy who once shared a screen with a man-eating shark and now has to pretend Kirk Cameron is a master rhetorician.
There are dramatic pauses. There are slow claps. There are arguments that would barely pass muster in a Reddit thread. If you’ve ever wanted to watch two people dramatically discuss abortion policy while a string section swells like someone just cured cancer — well, this movie is for you. For the rest of us, it’s like watching C-SPAN with a laugh track.
🧠 Jami Gertz Deserved Better
Jami Gertz is beautiful, poised, and once again handed a role where her character is defined by her hair and how much eye contact she makes with the male lead. She’s supposed to be the elite East Coast intellect to Jason’s working-class wisdom, but the movie doesn’t trust her with anything resembling a personality. She’s like a Law & Order guest star who wandered onto the wrong set and decided to stick around for the free lunch.
The script tries to suggest there’s romantic tension. What there is, instead, is two people saying words near each other while wearing sweaters.
🛑 The Abortion Plotline: An Ethical Minefield in a Teen Movie
In a stunning move, the movie barrels into the subject of abortion like a teenager learning to drive a stick shift — clumsy, panicked, and on the verge of stalling. Instead of nuance, we get melodrama. Instead of insight, we get a student body that treats a campus debate like a national referendum. In the real world, nobody decides where they stand on Roe v. Wade based on Kirk Cameron’s speech. In Listen to Me, apparently, everyone does.
🎬 Final Thoughts
Listen to Me wants to be Dead Poets Society for the podium crowd. What it ends up being is Saved by the Bell: The Policy Debate Years. It’s earnest, awkward, and desperately lacking self-awareness. It thinks it’s delivering wisdom. What it’s actually doing is lecturing you from a milk crate at a farmer’s market while wearing too much cologne.
⭐ Final Rating:
1.5 out of 5 overturned objections
Half a star for Roy Scheider, who at least gives the film a sense of authority. One star for Jami Gertz, who deserved a script that didn’t treat her like a particularly well-dressed prop. Everything else? Objection, Your Honor — relevance, logic, and entertainment value. Overruled.
