Cheaters

What I absolutely loved about this movie is the fact that it displays a genuine moral dilemma without necessarily preaching anything. It doesn't provide viewers a standpoint for moral ascendancy, instead, the viewers get the pleasure of interpreting the situation, thus gaining that threshold for ascendancy.

I'd say the film did play out a bias, and the bias was in favor of the students from Steimetz High. I'd say that it is rather a fair bias, because it is rare to see the cheaters as the protagonist. Amidst this, they weren't portrayed as the over-glamorized heroes that will promote a cheating society. What John Stockwell did was to give us a dose of reality, an arena for sympathize with cheaters, at the same time, displaying the consequences of the human act.

I love the mixture of documentary footages. Opening Credits was awesome, wherein there were raw footage in grainy stock of actual American high school. It played greatly on the emotional framework that the film worked on and I'm so glad my parents were able to find a copy of the film on DVD.

I am not normally one to post a review unless its a movie I hate (check out my review of Titanic), but after reading some ignorant reviews posted by people who have obviously never had to live in the type of environment that these kids had to, I decided to put things into perspective. I, myself, live in an empoverished area full of minorities. Poverty + Minorities = no one giving a rats ass about you. What these kids did was far more important than a simple academic decathlon, what they did was throw a brick through the window of the owner's box.

When you pit the rich against the poor, the rich will always win. There is no competition. And where there is no competition, there is no cheating.

Anyone who believes that this film glorifies dishonesty and deceit is part of the problem.

This tv movie basically shows what cheating gets you: short lived triumph and a quick downfall. But this goes way beyond an after school special. This tv movie examines it all as a scandal and goes into great detail about why and what happened. One thing I found interesting about this movie was how people reacted to the Steinmetz High win. Even though we know they cheated, it's interesting to see how some people automatically assume they cheated because they beat out a private school in a game of intelligence. Acting is superb and the whole movie is very realistic. Thumbs up on this one.

I saw this movie for the first time in 8th grade and thought it was great. Funny and entertaining, with a bit of a moral thrown in. Once I went to highschool my view changed somewhat, considering I went to (and am at) Whitney Young. It's been said here before, but the characterization is all wrong. Whitney has a majority of black students and is neither private nor in the suburbs. At the time the movie was made, Whitney was simply the best public school in the city (new rivals have cropped up in recent years), and so it developed a nucleus of extremely intelligent kids. For the most part they are not the privileged suburbanites portrayed in the movie, although there have been some families that would move into the city just to send their kids there. Anyways, it killed the moral for me, but it showed me a different fault in the Chicago Public schools, that good schools get help while smaller ones get forgotten. This was the story of a forgotten school fighting to get their name back into the light. They went about it the wrong way, but there is something to be learned from it. Or maybe not, considering the funding gap just seems to get worse.

But if I forget all of this, ignore the realities, this is still a great movie.

This movie presents a real moral dilemna... should students who have always been thought of as losers take the chance and cheat. The teacher has the toughest decision to make- whether to let his students cheat and what to do if they get caught. Jeff Daniels plays the part well- showing how he is torn- wanting his students to get recognition and wanting to teach them right from wrong. This movie is a very good look at the moral questions we all face in life.