Betsy Sharkey’s critic’s pick of the week: ‘Waiting for “Superman” ’
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F for failure –- that’s the grade our public school system deserves, according to filmmaker Davis Guggenheim’s chilling documentary, ‘Waiting for ‘Superman’.’
Using the stories of five youngsters trying to get into magnet schools that would up their chances of success, the film is already kicking up a dust storm from teachers unions, the target of much of the criticism, to the White House, which invited the kids to drop by.
Guggenheim, an Oscar winner for his Al Gore-global warming treatise, ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ understands that to reach (or teach) his audience, he has to do it in an engaging way. In ‘Waiting for ‘Superman’,’ he has his most entertaining documentary yet. Guggenheim is also an activist and the film’s website has all sorts of suggestions about how to get involved on the local and national level.
The teachers at the forefront of groundbreaking educational programs are passionate, the number-crunching is graphically clever and easy to disgest, but the real stars are the kids –- stoic, funny, determined, earnest and smart. We should not keep them waiting any longer.
--Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times film critic
Related:
Movie review: ‘Waiting for Superman’
Reporter’s Notebook: ‘Waiting for Superman’ and American education reform
Reporter’s Notebook: Education documentaries and plays
