Une chance pour tous

This surprisingly good movie is best described as an intellectual "Rocky", with the showdowns taking place in the halls of academia instead of a boxing ring. Kirk Cameron excells as the leader of a small college debate team facing the challenge of arguing the volatile abortion issue against a team from a renowned institution with a reputation for excellence in rhetoric. (The movie's working title was "Mismatch" before being released as "Listen to Me") The abortion arguments are handled with such balance that the movie drew no significant objections from either side of the issue. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this entry and would enthusiastically recommend it to others.

From the first seconds of the film, and continuously until the closing credits, this movie is a triumph in horrible film making. I LOVED IT! The film has incredibly one-dimensional main characters and an unbelievably underdeveloped supporting cast whose attempt at involvement is laughable and whose hijinxs make no sense. Take the picture-drawing kid. WHAT THE HECK!?? Or the guitar guy. WHA!?! The movie slams nonsense at you and it's amazing. The next brilliant part of the film was the absolutely awful debating. The arguments the debaters use are just plain ludicrous. "Abortion is an abomination in the eyes of God!" Then loads of applause. COME ON!!!! While arguing against abortion, the debaters say: 1) I support the right to abortion 2) I had an abortion and would have one again 3) Abortion isn't wrong 4) I hope the state legislatures give people abortion rights Did anyone else notice that!? But what is the best part are the great ways that like everything ties into the end. Every single line uttered in the beginning derives significance at the end. Dostoevsky, pocketing ten dollars, the the prison kid, wrap-up specialist, everything. This movie is the Plan 9 from Outer Space for a new generation. How did this movie ever get made? I don't know. But thank God it did.

Now to you, the layman this movie may seem like a contrived piece of crap. Sure the acting is awful, the writing cliche, and the plot looks like something thrown together from some beverly hills 90210 episodes. And I know that for any debators out there the accuracy to real debate is slim to none. But if you are a sensitive person you can look deeper and see what is probably the most compelling story ever conceived. This is a true morality play. The rich kid dies after trying to rape a girl, granted the rape made no sense but go with it, kirk cameron pulls off a southern accent!!!! And those harvard jerks! THEY HAVE SLICKED BACK HAIR. If you don't see this movie you will go to hell.

Abortion...say that word and everyone thinks about an unborn child, I know I did, this movie shows that there are many forms of abortion and discrimination. Kirk Cameron's delivery of an "Awe shucks" Okie is excellent and he is surrounded by a supporting cast that play their parts to the fullest. This movie is an awesome display of depth and talent. I have seen bad reviews on this movie and can only feel sorry for those folks because they obviously missed the plot and in doing so were cheated out of a great movie. 2-Thumbs up! A must see for any intelligent person! v/r Buddy

Man, what a dud! I try to finish every movie that I can, no matter how horrible it is. I couldn't stand more than 50 minutes of this movie. I consider the 80's to be the golden age of movies, but they are responsible for some atrocities as well. This movie takes itself way too seriously. This was the end of the 80's, and films like this were becoming rapidly obsolete, considering how awful this movie is that's a good thing. We get groan inducing terms such as "Spank the monkey" , "Choke the chicken" Many sexual innuendo's that feel incredibly dated. We get an interesting storyline about abortion that fails to capitalize on the immense potential that subject has. I also hated how quickly Jami Gertz and Kirk Cameron's romance blossomed. More buildup would have been nice. Kirk Cameron has the lame Oklahoma accent that keeps shifting. His performance is aggressively cocky and downright terrible. Jami Gertz doesn't fare much better. She's easy to look at, but that's about it. Roy Scheider can peel a potato and be interesting most of the time, but even he bored me in this one. I felt Amanda Peterson stole the show in this movie The 80's produced a lot of good coming of age films, but this is not one of them. It's very boring. Let it stay in obscurity where it belongs 1/10

I was living in Southern California when this film came out. It wasn't the first choice for me and my group of about five friends; however, it wasn't sold out on that particular Saturday night, so we bought tickets. To explain the title of this review: While I was living in LA, I had the opportunity to see several films that just didn't make it into wide release. This was one of them; others included The Chocolate Wars (a bit overwrought), Some Girls (very nice work), and Track 29 (just plain weird). I soon grew to appreciate living in SoCal for the ability to see films that don't make it to the rest of the country until they catch them on cable at 3:30 am. Many of these films probably just didn't play well before the test audiences; hence, no wide release. But Listen to Me was just plain bad, the kind of film that teaches you about filmmaking by showing how not to do it. The acting was inexplicable; the plot, unrealistic (how many college students greet debate with the same enthusiasm they have for football?); the pacing, bumpy; the dialogue, unbelievable. I couldn't shake the impression that what this film needed was somebody with the experience to catch these flaws; instead, Listen to Me seemed like it was made by beginners. The fact that the film's plot deals with such a heavy issue as abortion only highlighted the shallowness of the movie. And this film pretty much nixed Kirk Cameron's career on the big screen. Make of that what you will.

If you are looking for a movie that tackles the abortion issue from both sides, this is it. Cameron and Gertz through their characters Tucker Muldowney & Monica Tomanski are college debaters faced with arguing the anti-abortion side of the issue. They are joined by their wealthy (politically connected) friend Garson McKellar (Timothy Patrick Quill) and their interesting debate professor Charlie Nichols (Roy Scheider). Despite the college environment, and occasional arguments based on opinions alone, a person could learn a great deal about the abortion issue from this movie, regardless of the side of the issue they believe in. Overall I would give this movie an 8.5 out of 10.

This films meagerly attempts to portray the human drama of the rough and tumble world of collegiate debating. Get the picture? And it stars Kirk Cameron. Enough said? Maybe not. To say that the character development is hackneyed and the plot line trite would be an insult to the words "plot" and "character." Heck, it would be an insult to "kackneyed" and "trite". This film is my standard for worst film. When I see a really bad film I ask myself, "Was it as bad as "Listen to Me"?. A few films have reached these depths of mandanity but only a few. It's not even laughably bad like "Troll 2" just boringly predictable, formulaic, and trite. If you want to speed the parting guest, put this film on. . .

Though it has been years since I saw "Listen", I remember it not for the quality of the acting, which I thought was fine, but for delivering the most eloquent argument against abortion I had ever seen, even to this day. Any movie that gets the range of comments that have been posted, from rave to rage, is certainly has to be called controversial. So the debate scenes did not match up to the life experiences of some, it is a STORY. Its message is very, very strong, and delivered quite effectively. Isn't that what movies, books, plays, photography, et al are about? I just saw "Cider House Rules", the flip side of the abortion discussion from "Listen". Try watching "Listen" and "Cider House" back to back for what should be quite an emotional and intellectual experience. I rate both films at least 9 out of 10. PS: I am 64, male, anti-abortion, and pro-choice.

This film brings up the tail end of the 1980s "John Hughes-ish" movies about earnest teens and young adults. As a tail-ender, it's not as rewarding as The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, or even Some Kind of Wonderful. It's not a great movie, not even that good of a movie, but if you like its kinfolk, you may enjoy it. One caution: its portrayal of college debate is utter fiction. Do not imagine for a moment that college debate resembles this film's view of it in the slightest.