LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hilary Swank and the makers of Freedom Writers have the solution to all the troubles facing public-school classrooms seething with racial intolerance and hatred.Give the kids notebooks, have them scribble a few lines about the terrible lives they've led, and soon they'll be pulling together for group hugs and fundraising events for extracurricular activities.

The true story behind Freedom Writers is undeniably amazing and inspiring. Idealistic rookie teacher Erin Gruwell came into a Long Beach, California, high school soon after the riots in Los Angeles over the acquittal of policemen accused of the videotaped beating of Rodney King, defused the rancour among black, white, Hispanic and Asian teens and injected hope, common ground and academic achievement into their lives.

Director Richard LaGravenese's dramatisation sadly presents the Cliff's Notes account of Gruwell's accomplishment. Despite occasional moments of inspiration,>Freedom Writers <$>simplistically focuses on maudlin highlights and glosses over the obstacles to rallying a dangerously disparate group of youths more accustomed to loathe than trust one another.

All it would need is a clip of the King's plea — "Can't we all just get along?" — to push the movie completely into Pollyanna territory.

At the outset, Erin (Swank) seems an impossibly naive optimist, choosing to teach English amid the racial strife at Wilson High School so she can be on the front line in the battle to help save the youth of America.

Her department head, veteran teacher Margaret Vail (Imelda Staunton), smugly dismisses Erin's aspirations, insisting from decades of experience that the best you can instil in such students is a tendency to obey authority.

Erin's faith is rocked early on as her classroom erupts in violence, the students segregate their desks into little racial territories and the kids openly scorn her attempts to connect with them.

Her father (Scott Glenn), a jaded liberal, thinks she's crazy to try. Her husband (Patrick Dempsey) is proud of Erin but soon sours as her job consumes her life.

After a bothersome racial incident, Erin begins to draw on the students' shared dangers and strife at home and on the gang-ruled streets to create a sense of community among them.

Erin distributes journals and instructs her students to write in them every day, soon discovering that kids rated at a fifth-grade reading level actually are poets in waiting, with pain and trauma they need to express.

Adapting his screenplay from The Freedom Writers Diar$>created and published by Gruwell and her students, LaGravenese abruptly turns the story from tension and division to devotion and togetherness.

The movie plays out over two school years, but the action changes so suddenly, harmony seems to arrive overnight, punctuated by a musical montage or two.

There are legitimately powerful moments, including the students' cathartic visit to the Holocaust exhibit at Los Angeles' Museum of Tolerance and a touching re-creation of their meeting with a woman who helped shelter Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis.

But too much of Freedom Write<$>rings falsely hopeful, bearing the message that a grin and good intentions are all that's needed to overcome enmity. The movie tosses in discord among Vail and other educators who oppose Erin's methods, but the drama is shallow.

Likewise, most of the students' outside lives are superficially presented, save for Eva (April Lee Hernandez), a Hispanic teen whose diary entries serve as loose narration for the movie.

Along with Hernandez, the cast of students is highlighted by rapper Mario and particularly Jason Finn as a homeless teen whose transition to eager pupil is heartfelt.

In her first film lead since winning her second Academy Award, for Million Dollar Baby, Swank is earnest and often endearing, bringing goofy sweetness to Erin's efforts to talk the slangy talk of her students ("My badness" — rather than "My bad" — Erin cutely proclaims after a slight misstep in class).

Yet Swank's performance generally comes off like the movie itself — insubstantial and lightweight given the serious themes of reclamation and salvation tFreedom Writers <$>pretends to explore>

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Freedom Writers, runs for 123 minutes and is now showing at the Liberty Theatre. Two stars out of four.