Waiting For 'Superman'

Davis Guggenheim’s look at the decline and fall of the U.S. public school system is as devastating as An Inconvenient Truth, his Oscar-winning doc about global warming. He doesn’t have the charismatic Al Gore as his spokesperson this time, but he does have the heart-wrenching stories of five bright children whose futures are at stake as they await lotteries – yup, you heard that right – to determine if they’ll get into schools across the country that aren’t ‘dropout factories’.

The issues are complex, shrouded in bureaucratic red tape and years of neglect. In the first half, Guggenheim, who also narrates, gives much time to talking heads and statistics. Thankfully, he’s found several excellent communicators – among them wildly energetic educator Geoffrey Canada and Washington, D.C.’s no-bullshit school chancellor, Michelle Rhee – to explain things.

But the film finds its heart and soul in the children’s stories (as well as their parents’). And as in An Inconvenient Truth, there’s a call to action in the closing credits.

– Glenn Sumi, NOW Toronto