`FREEDOM WRITERS' ENTERTAINS BUT DOES NOT EDUCATE.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

An inspirational teacher story that won't be making many friends among sensitive educators or at the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, ``Freedom Writers'' proffers its platitudes invitingly even as its many exaggerations stick in your craw.

The movie is based on the life of Erin Gruwell, a short-term Long Beach high school teacher who saw some long-term results by getting her students to look past their racial divisions and see their shared experiences. Judging from the film, you'd think that no teacher had ever tried this. Worse, you'd guess that apart from the noble Gruwell, no other teacher cares.

That's the problem when Hollywood stands and delivers a fact-inspired story about someone trying to whip a little learning into dangerous minds. What's meant to inspire only serves to confirm for naysayers the disarray of the public education system. Gruwell's work is noteworthy, but it is by no means unusual, despite the film's cartoon-like portrayals of her bitter, envious and in one case, racist colleagues.

``In Long Beach,'' gang member Eva (April Lee Hernandez) says in an opening voice-over, ``it all comes down to what you look like. It's all about color. If you are Latino or Asian or black, you can get blasted any time you walk out the door.''

At Wilson High School in the mid-'90s, racial divisions cast a pall over the campus, often leading to violence. Yet, it's that very diversity that draws the idealistic Gruwell (a strong Hilary Swank) to sign on to teach freshman English. ``The real fighting should happen in the classroom,'' Gruwell chirps, fingering the pearl necklace she wears to class.

Soon enough, there is plenty of fighting, but it's not the verbal jousting Gruwell imagined. Gruwell's trial by fire and trust-building form the heart of writer-director Richard LaGravenese's movie.

LaGravenese finds inventive ways of showing the obstacles Gruwell's more disadvantaged kids faced and how she helped them make the connection between the fear and prejudice present in their lives with that found in a work like ``The Diary of Anne Frank.''

The movie builds to a powerful climax at the 90-minute mark with Gruwell and her students securing a campus visit from an unlikely guest speaker. The problem is, ``Freedom Writers'' clocks in at 2 hours, and nothing in that last half-hour can match the intensity of the earlier drama.

And strangely, given the amount of comment and screen time, we never do find out why LaGravenese focused so much early attention on Gruwell's pearl necklace. Like a lot of other elements in the movie -- the embellishments of the fraught atmosphere at Wilson chief among them -- the missing pearls give a nagging sense of incompleteness, of a complex story being juiced to the disservice of the very thing it purports to champion -- education.

Glenn Whipp, [phone].

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FREEDOM WRITERS - Two and one half stars

(PG-13: violent content, some thematic material, language.)

Starring: Hilary Swank.

Director: Richard LaGravenese.

Running time: 2 hr. 3 min.

Playing: In wide release.

In a nutshell: Flawed but engaging mentor-making-a-difference story based on the experiences of a Long Beach high-school teacher.

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Hilary Swank portrays sensitive teacher Erin Gruwell in the film ``Freedom Writers,'' about an educator fighting to reach her students and make a difference in their lives.