When I saw Davis Guggenheim’s “Waiting for Superman” at the Los Angeles Film Festival in June, I noted that “the film casts a broad net when it would have been something more as a focused study” and that “modest stretching to make the point” dilutes the overall impact of the film. However, I also made it clear that while not entirely successful as a work of art, it’s certainly worth applauding as a work of activism.
Well, Diane Ravitch at The New York Review of Books isn’t nearly as forgiving. In a piece called “The Myth of Charter Schools,” Ravitch takes Guggenheim’s film to the cleaners, attacking its depiction of charter schools and denouncing privatized education as the answer to a struggling public school system. She also mentions similar docs released this year — “The Cartel” and “The Lottery” — but mainly, Ravitch dives into the facts and figures to disassemble seemingly every frame of Guggenheim’s film.