The sentimental subject of "The History Boys" is a group of eight boys at a secondary school in Sheffield, England, who have done so well on their exams that all have qualified as finalists for Oxford or Cambridge. The year is 1983, and one of the teachers entrusted with guiding their studies for the extra preparatory term in which they enroll is a loquacious aesthete played by the wonderful Richard Griffiths.

The school's status-conscious headmaster (Clive Merrison), however, worries that the casual teaching methods of Griffiths's Hector are insufficiently tailored to the requirements of an Oxbridge interview. So he hires a younger teacher, Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), as an additional tutor for the boys. The goal is marketing-driven: to repackage the lads as slick, original thinkers.

The actors in all the major roles -- including the eight history boys themselves -- are holdovers from the stage version, which playwright Alan Bennett adapted for the screen. The two among them who are most entertaining are Posner (Samuel Barnett), who is gay, Jewish and stricken with unrequited lust for the other, Dakin (Dominic Cooper), a precocious ladies' man whose conquests include the nubile school secretary. (See Film Notes on Page 32.)

The movie was made while the actors were still performing the stage version, and they modulate their performances for the screen admirably, even if the film is not quite as engaging as the play. But Wildean panache of this caliber is not the norm in movie dialogue, so on this score alone, "The History Boys" is a blessing. The top-drawer work of a fine ensemble is another. When, in one key scene, Griffiths shows how Hector draws from Barnett's Posner shadings of meaning in Hardy's poem, "Drummer Hodge," it's we who get the memorable lesson.

-- Peter Marks (Dec. 8, 2006)

Contains profanity and sexual content.