Characters in Won't Back Down crafted more like "talking points"...

[madfloridian]

than human beings.

This article from The Nation calls the movie "hackneyed and sentimental."

Bad Lessons From 'Won't Back Down'

Won’t Back Down is a crude work of art.
 
Each character in the new film, about Pittsburgh parents and teachers who band together to take over a struggling school, is crafted less as a believable human being than as a talking point. First there are the students of F-rated Adams Elementary, a tapestry of white, black, Latino and Asian children. But racial diversity is not typical of failing schools; of the seven shut down in Pittsburgh this year because of low performance, two are more than 95 percent African-American, and the rest more than two-thirds black.

Then there is the seedy union boss who couldn’t care less about children and who has politicians in his pocket; and the best teacher at Adams Elementary, who happens to be a young, white, male Teach for America alum named Michael, who grows more troubled each day by the excesses of organized labor—despite his liberal inclinations. While many Hollywood education melodramas feature a white teacher saving a school of poor children of color (think Dangerous Minds), Won’t Back Down strives for some modicum of political correctness. Here the reform spark is lit by a white, working-class single mom, Jamie Gallagher, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal with almost noxious levels of wide-eyed, girlish spunk.

More:

Though Won’t Back Down is hackneyed and sentimental, Davis’s restrained emotionalism breathes life into Nona, a middle-class divorcée who had idealistically followed her mother into teaching, only to become burned out after years of battling bureaucracy. I found the character of Jamie much more improbable. Although she works days at a used-car dealership and nights at a bar, she never seems sleep-deprived or sick or worried about health insurance. Jamie always has the energy to grab a stack of petitions and rally parents to her cause with a smile; somehow she also has time to begin a romance with Mr. Teach for America. And though Jamie’s boss is constantly yelling at her for spending more time on activism than on work, she miraculously never gets fired.

The reporter, Dana Goldstein, has an interesting quote. She points out that "Mr. Teach for America lectures the crowd, “Do any of you remember what we’re doing here? We’re not here for unions and teachers. We’re here for kids.”

Oh, yeah, we have heard that before. The "reformers" premise that teachers care only for themselves and not for the kids....and implied is that all the billionaires buying up public education are going to save the day.

[No Elephants]

1. It's a propaganda film.

It might be interesting to look into the history of who wrote this film and why.

In an interview, Judd Apatow, experienced writer of one financially successful screenplay after another (e.g., Knocked Up), said it takes him about two years to write a script--and he has no other day job.

Also, he can be pretty sure that when he finishes a cript, someone will pay him for it because he has such a long track record of writing films that do well at the box office. Or maybe he is even paid to write the film, not the case with most screenwriters.

I can't imagine a screenwriter who is not getting paid to write a script being so inspired by dumping on schoolteachers that he or she spends a good chunk of a lifetime writing a film like this without a financial arrangement up front.




I don't think this movie would ever have been made if only Republicans were touting charter schools.

[Enthusiast]

2. The movie sounds worse than I expected.

It's blatant propaganda.

[No Elephants]

3. Okay, I should have followed the link before posting. Financed by Walden Media.

It is a propaganda film.

Walden Media was founded in 2001 by Michael Flaherty and Cary Granat. Granat was president of Miramax's Dimension Films division, and Flaherty came from the world of education. Flaherty was called an “entrepreneur in education” by the Boston Globe for his work with innovative programs meant to help underprivileged students gain access to quality education.<[br />

<very big snip>

CriticismAfter the release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, rumors flew that Walden Media was a means for fulfilling Anschutz's Christian agenda:

We've never had a conversation about religion with him. Period, says David Weil, chief executive officer for the Anschutz Film Group. We all come from different religious backgrounds here. We all believe in a family values approach to positive messages — but religious orientation doesn't factor into it.'"<8>

Sounds like at least one of the two founders is a RWer.

The extent to which the right wing is bent on indoctrinating kids is scary. What's scarier: the left does not seem to do the same, so it's only one viewpoint getting drummed into kids.

So, you have wives of prominent Republican politicians "writing" pre school books (Writing is in quotaion marks because I ssspect one or more ghostwriters.)

You have RWers providing courses, complete with teachers, free of charge, to public schools on things like American history.

You have the Texas School Board choosing textbooks for the public schools of the entire nation.

You have a variety of youth organizations, either started or taken over by wingers.

Oh, and the Duggars of the country, having babies and home schooling to bring up them up as neo theo Republicans, because Jesus was all about transferring wealth from the 99$ to the 1% and then chastising the 99% for waging class warfare on the 1%. (Wasn't it the 1% of his cay who got him crucified?)

And so on.

And the Docratic counterparts of things like the above are:

But, when reports of the demise of the GOP turn out to have been wildly exaggerated, posters on some message board somewhere will whine about how the bad, bad Republicons indoctrinated generattions of kids.

If I know the above and politics is not my day job, don't you think people who get paid to know stuff like this know it? Say, people in Democratic (aka center right) think tanks.

I wonder why they do nothing to counteract it.