Above-average TV movie. It raises some interesting questions and, unfortunately, tries to provide answers. It's the dark side of "Stand and Deliver." A teacher in a working-class Chicago high school, Dr. Plecki, tries to -- wait a minute. What's a guy with a doctorate doing teaching in a slum school? Never mind. He's played by Jeff Daniels as if defeated from the beginning, with little energy. His students are uninterested in his lit classes; they fight, throw spitballs, curse magnificently, and fall asleep, except for Joli Fitch, played by cute, perky, and preppy-looking Jena Malone with a certain verve. She forms a kind of conspiratorial bond with Plecki and they gather a group of the smartest students in the school to form a team for the academic decathlon. Their SATs are evidently high, but none of them except Joli shows any evidence of it, nor any interest in academics. However, as fate will have it, one students manages to steal copies of the decathlon exam and brings them to the team meeting. In most movies, this is the scene in which the teacher provides the students with a proper role model. Not here. Plecki asks if the students want to cheat -- and they jump at the chance, with one demurral from a Russian immigrant girl who can't be expected to have properly absorbed American ethics yet. Plecki convinces her that, after all, everybody cheats. Life in unfair. Those *********s at Whitney Young High are all spoiled rich kids and the school has a huge budget, and so on. She demonstrates her quick intelligence and her latent Americanism by readily agreeing to cheat. They win the state academic decathlon. But this brings expectable problems, as it did in "Stand and Deliver." How come these lunkheads from the inner city suddenly are able to defeat the Whitney Young team, winners for the past nine years in a row? In fact, Plecki watches "Stand and Deliver" on TV in order to figure out how to get out of the hot water he and his students have gotten into! (Let's see -- if you see this movie, then you're watching art imitating life imitating art imitating life. The old "serial universe" problem.) The student who originally brought the purloined test to the teacher's attention had been excluded from the decathlon team and, understandably petulant, squeals on the others. This only adds to the bureaucratic and media turmoil surrounding Plecki and his band of unlikely Mirmidons. The media people are self parodies: "Is it true that Dr. Plecki was recruiting cult members?" So are the self-righteous bureaucrats: "I can't comment on that aspect of the investigation." There are interesting issues. Simple questions arise. Are you justified in cheating simply because you feel the playing field is tilted against you? Does the end justify the means? That sort of thing, for which Gordon Gekko would have equally simple answers. The film-makers come up with the same answers. It's on the side of the cheaters all the way. It's better to be realistic than idealistic -- an A average gets you into a better school. It opens doors in a way that a D average doesn't. You can do things in one of two ways: the proper way and the smart way, and the smart way is quicker and more effective. The kids survive the ordeal but have developed a nurturant bond with one another. One or two go on to college, the rest to working-class jobs. (Why working-class jobs, with those high SATs? Presumably they don't mind winning, it's just learning that they abhor. Why should I have to know the names of all fourteen planets?) Well, the way the film sums up the story at the end is kind of a problem because, after all, education is what you make it. We could skip the whole tiresome business of GPAs and SATs and academic decathlons easily by just awarding everyone a BA from the University of Chicago at birth. As one student interviewee puts it, what's the point of knowing about stuff like polynomials? Why should we have to know what "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" means? There's another, more serious problem, one which involves not ethics but science. There is no evidence that attending a school with a higher budget, that pays teachers a better salary, that has more equipment or smaller class sizes, improves a student's grades. The primary determinant of academic performance seems to be values inspired within the family. If you grow up in a home that has a copy of Dante's "Inferno" on the shelf, you'll probably do better in school than if you grow up in a home in which Mommy and Daddy sit around on the couch, scratching themselves, drinking Budweiser, and guffawing at "World's Most Violent TV Videos." I judge this movie as above average not because of the intentions of the writer-director, but despite them. Don't be like the students here and grab for the easy interpretation the film itself offers you, but instead think about what you've just seen. It's harder work, but worth the effort.
Review of Cheaters
