The movie is a bit of a rose-colored glasses look at bullying and intolerance, as seen by an 8th grader (though the narrator is a man, looking back on his experience with the eyes of an adult who has learned more about what the experience meant now that he is some distance from it, as well as being older and wiser).
There are two threads that deal with tolerance in a way that is not about gender or race, so resonate a little differently as a result. The time is 1965 and the place is a middle school in Southern California (hey, that could have been me--I went to middle school in SoCal--but was bussed and the issues of tolerance might seem more like the civil rights era that this occurs in). Andy is the kid whose head we are in, and he has two significant events occur--the first is that his absolute favorite teacher assigns him to do a project with the most bullied, ostracized boy on campus, Stanley. Stanley has a quiet dignity that makes us immediately sympathetic to his cause, and eventually Andy is won over as well.
The second thing of significance is that his favorite teacher, a mild mannered English teacher, Mr. Simon (played with warmth and depth by Ed Harris) is accused of being gay. Which he refuses to respond to. He is accused by a bully. The bully has suffered expulsion from school because Mr. Simon has caught him beating up a girl. So he has an axe to grind with Mr. Simon. But none of that matters. Mr. Simon won't dignify the charge with a response, and his principal doesn't feel that she can protect him. So Mr. Simon takes a course that he feels he can live with, but it is a bittersweet end. A little too much sugar to be a great movie, but it is a good one.
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