Variety
For anyone who still remembers 1999’s antiseptic Meryl Streep vehicle “Music of the Heart,” Brazilian classroom drama “The Violin Teacher” may sound discouragingly familiar: A down-on-his-luck concert violinist regains his mojo through teaching, bringing harmony to a spiky collective of teens less fortunate than himself. Happily, Sergio Machado’s film brings a little more local color and narrative danger to proceedings, even as it ultimately hews to failsafe crowd-pleaser formula.
