Right-Winged Financed Education "Reform" Movie - Won't Back Down - Getting Slammed By Critics

[liskddksil]

Philip Anschutz and his Christian conservative company Walden Media, who also helped to finance 2010's "documentary" Waiting for Superman is back with another oversimplified foray (and this time even more fictionalized) into the problems of public schools, where teachers unions=bad, and charter-schools, merit pay and teach for america = good. The reviews so far are not pretty:

"Grossly oversimplifying the issue at hand, writer-director Daniel Barnz's disingenuous pot-stirrer plays to audiences' emotions rather than their intelligence, offering meaty roles for Maggie Gyllenhaal as a determined single mom, and Viola Davis as the good egg among a rotten batch of teachers, while reducing everyone else to cardboard characterizations."

Variety:
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117948420?refcatid=31

"But the script goes very heavy on references to union-protected "checked-out zombies," while stinting on specifics about how Jamie and Nona's dream school would actually differ from the public school they're trying to reform."

Chicago Tribune:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/sc-mov-0926-wont-back-down-20120927,0,3027197.column

"'Won't Back Down' blames this failure on teachers' unions and bureaucracy. It embraces a slowly growing movement in which parents vote to take control of their children's schools, reward gifted teachers and throw out overpaid, lazy and administrators held in place by seniority. It all sounds so simple — and it is, because the movie makes it seem simplistic."

Roger Ebert:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120926/REVIEWS/120929988

"Theaters should install glow-in-the-dark versions of those old clunking classroom clocks so viewers can count the agonizing minutes ticking by as they watch the movie."

NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=161807586

[liskddksil]

1. And my new favorite

"A kind of Norma Rae for the Paul Ryan set..."

Philadelphia Inquirer:
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/movies/20120928_Cast_earns_an_A_in_failing-school_story.html

[liberalhistorian]

2. As the proud daughter of teachers

who worked damned hard for decades and who ultimately got little for it, I absolutely refuse to even consider seeing this movie. And given that I live in a red state, it's almost impossible to avoid the seemingly endless ads for it that surround me everywhere. I am SICK. TO. DEATH of teacher and union bashing, by people who have NO CLUE what it is really like to be in the classroom and who have no perspective that it's not just the teacher, it's the parents, family, and community as well. My parents began their careers before unions, and they could tell you some things about working conditions, pay and (none at all) "rights" at that time. It makes me sick to see what people are trying to do to the profession they and so many of my family and friends dedicated their lives to while getting shit for it.