Stand and Deliver (1988)
Directed by Ramón Menéndez
Jaime Escalante is a mathematics teacher in a school in a hispanic neighbourhood. Convinced that his students have potential, he adopts unconventional teaching methods to try and turn gang members and no-hopers into some of the country's top algebra and calculus students.
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What critics compared Stand and Deliver to
Speaking of movie teachers, Liz gladly cedes her job to a string of them, starting with Edward James Olmos (“Stand and Deliver”) and Morgan Freeman (“Lean on Me”).
She likes to nap at her desk while letting her students watch classroom related movies like "Stand and Deliver."
Class with her consists of playing DVDs of goodish Hollywood movies like “Stand and Deliver,’’ “Lean on Me,’’ and “Dangerous Minds,’’ movies about brown kids fighting to subsist in bad situations, while she texts or drinks or sleeps.
Staggering into the classroom nursing hangover after hangover, "educating" her students with an array of school-themed movies on DVD that begin with " Stand and Deliver " and devolve to " Scream ," she's a classroom disaster, and her colleagues make a very complementary array of foils.
We’ve seen that in movies like “Stand And Deliver” and “Lean On Me” – movies she plays in class rather than teaching – and “Bad Teacher” is here to puncture those clichés.
It's cute that Elizabeth initially shows up to class each day and pops on a movie?subject-appropriate titles like "Stand and Deliver" and "Dangerous Minds" eventually segue to " Scream "?but her drunken, hung-over histrionics never comfortably coalesce with what she is like otherwise.
It's a trick, admittedly, to show people learning math though Stand and Deliver (1988) made feisty drama out of it.
Based on a real life coach, also named Ken Carter (who's been hitting talk shows with Jackson to promote the film), Carter takes an approach that's part Lean on Me meets Hoosiers, part Stand and Deliver meets Friday Night Lights, and okay, maybe a little White Shadow, too.
But screenwriters Mark Schwahn and John Gatins continually compromise the story's real-world bite by recycling scenes and situations from other coach-team weepies (Hoosiers et al) and teacher-student inspirationals (Stand and Deliver et al).
But while the movie's motivational message is patently praiseworthy, the game it runs across the screen, for well over two hours, is so full of familiar moves from the likes of "Stand and Deliver," "Hoosiers" and "Remember the Titans" that it finally induces more fidgeting than cheers.
While Jackson is nowhere near the absurd caricature played by Morgan Freeman in the hilariously over-the-top "Lean on Me," Edward James Olmos (whose dedicated math teacher in "Stand and Deliver" was a sly, subversively schlubby revelation) has nothing to worry about.
It's Stand and Deliver and Bad News Bears in flagrante delecto.
That territory has been covered in a myriad of films, including "Stand and Deliver," "Dangerous Minds," and the now 40-year-old "To Sir, With Love" (which is the racially opposite twin of FW).
But if you've seen "To Sir, With Love," "Dead Poet's Society," "The Corn is Green," or "Stand and Deliver" – to take a random sample – you've already seen much of this movie.
Dangerous Minds , Stand and Deliver --is based on a true story about a teacher who gets urban kids motivated lends some credibility.
If you've seen "Blackboard Jungle," "Up the Down Staircase," "To Sir, With Love," "Dangerous Minds" or "Stand and Deliver," you'll be way ahead of the story.
If you’ve never been exposed to Stand and Deliver or Dangerous Minds or Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poets Society or Lean on Me or Music of the Heart or Finding Forrester or Pay It Forward or Take the Lead , then have at it: you’ll probably love it.
Coming after so many similar films—Stand and Deliver, Lean on Me, and, especially, Dangerous Minds come to mind—Freedom Writers has its work cut out.
Edward James Olmos ("Stand and Deliver") is the paper's editor.
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There have been many films about at-risk teens receiving guidance from a surrogate parental figure, from Stand and Deliver to Freedom Writers to The Blind Side, which tend to feel false due to waterboarding the audience with sentimental inspiration and self-congratulatory smugness instead of honesty.
It’s a premise we’ve seen many, many times before in films like Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds.
My guess is the movie's makers expect us to see Fletcher as a tough-but-fair teacher, taking to a new level the tradition of pictures like Stand and Deliver.
Reading the plot description, you have to figure that this is going to be another one of those treacly institutional racism movies, such as Stand and Deliver.