Director Peter Bogdanovich
Starring Sidney Poitier, Christian Payton, Dana Eskelson
Rated PG
Score 5/6

After thirty years teaching in London, Mark Thackeray retires and returns to Chicago. There, however, the challenge of reaching kids in an inner-city school proves to be too much to resist.

Considering To Sir, with Love II was the second in the case I thought that it was only right that I review it after reviewing To Sir, with Love yesterday.

To Sir, with Love II is an American telemovie that was first released back in April of 1997. This is not one of those faux sequels because Sidney Poitier reprised his role Mark Thackery, there was also cameo appearances at the beginning of the movie by Lulu and Judy Geeson as Thackery’s students thirty years older. Unfortunately, James Clavell did not direct the sequel to his movie as he died in 1994 in Switzerland aged 72.

I suppose To Sir, with Love II could just be dismissed as being ‘Mark Thackery goes to America’ but this really does a completely different feel from the 1967 prequel, which I suppose is only to be expected because even though every generation have a lot of the same problems, there is always a new problem the previous generation hasn’t faced. So this isn’t a late 90’s example of lazy nostalgic filmmaking.
It was great to see that with this movie the film makers took the opportunity to dive deeper into the characters lives not just only with Thackery who was trying to find a woman who he knew when he was younger but the film also looked into the lives of his students.
I am completely unfamiliar with the work with anybody cast in this movie except for Sidney Poitier. I thought both Christian Payton and Dana Eskelson great performances.