Teacher of the Year

I wasn't sure what to expect with this movie, but I actually liked it a lot. One of the better "Mockumentary" style films I have seen, and possibly one of my favorites.

Basically Keegan Micheal Key is hilarious as Principal Douche, and the other supporting comedic actors keep it funny, but at the heart of it is a very good story with some depth too which made me want to find out what would happen next. As a "Mockumentary" though it is not a typical style comedy with typical style jokes every minute. It has some serious moments, but plenty of funny stuff too. Making it one of the better Mockumentaries in many years in my opinion.

Do not expect a typical film and let it take you where it will go, very funny and really well done.

Truman High is a charter high school in southwest Los Angeles. Its students come from neighborhoods that they would like to be able to leave, and some students will succeed and likely make it in life. The teachers seem committed to making this happen, but many of the students don't seem to care.

English teacher and soccer coach Mitch Carter is Teacher of the Year for California. Many of the students like him. But he has a chance at a high-paying job which will involve a lot of travel, and even though he loves teaching, it has its problems. And he has a wife who doesn't like her advertising job, which allows her to work from home a lot, and an adorable daughter and another baby on the way.

The movie is a documentary, though it's obvious early that it is too silly to be real, and we see there are actors playing cast members. But almost the entire movie is the documentary, and while we may forget the cameras are there, there are often signs that these people are being followed around, and sometimes they want what they say to be private. The person making the documentary actually speaks a number of times but is not seen.

Also, the documentary has a lot more than just Mitch's story. It almost seems to be about the school, its teachers, and the problem students.

Parents come in when their children have done something wrong. Some care, some think their kids can do no wrong, some don't understand why their kids are being criticized.

One teacher is falsely accused of an offense by a student and nearly fired. I won't say how his situation turns out, but the plot does show what a good man Mitch is.

Will Mitch leave the school? I can't answer that question because, for one thing, I'm not sure the question ever gets answered.

Be sure to stay around after the words "The End", which come prematurely. There are lots of outtakes, and the last few are bloopers.

Matt Lescher does a good job. Most of the actors here do.

Keegan-Michael Key is Principal Douche. The name is Dutch and not pronounced like one would expect. Except by just about every student and anyone who is mad at him. Douche tries too hard to be cool and is not respected by anyone. And if he tries to discipline students, they just don't listen. I am reminded of Barney Fife yelling and waving his hands, and Sheriff Taylor actually getting the job done. There is a vice-principal who hands out detention to nearly every student he sees, at least in the finished film, but people don't seem to take him much more seriously. I question if anyone is in charge at this place.

Jason and Randy Sklar are the Hammer brothers who are the school's college counselors. I wouldn't recommend taking advice from either one of them. They are very strange.

I'm not absolutely certain, but I think Jamie Kaler is the robotics teacher. He is serious about getting his students to do well, but he has an attitude problem. He is jealous of Mitch's success and doesn't think much of second place. And in one scene he is just plain cruel to his students. But don't be too concerned. They seem a lot happier at the end when the same scene gets messed up in one of the bloopers.

Caitlin Carmichael is so cute as Mitch's young daughter. I like his wife too.

Shari Belafonte also stands out but has only a few lines.

This movie is not for the kids. One teacher uses the proper language when describing sex. But I'm not sure kids are ready for that. They're not ready for a lot of the humor here. Another teacher makes a tasteless Helen Keller joke, but the kids seem to respond to her style.

Do I recommend the film? Of course. It has a good mix of humor, inspiring stories, and moral dilemmas.

OK, so what is this? This movie is part comedy, part drama. Horribly mixed together. Awfully inconsistent, the drama is cringe worthy, and very little of the comedy is actually funny.

I think I get what they are going for with the comedy, but it does not really work. They are trying that: "awkward, dorky, boring people taking things really seriously, not understanding that everyone thinks they are losers"-type humor. Ann there are a lot of scenes like that, but then, right the next moment things are supposed to be touching, and heart felt.

The scenes with Keegan-Michael Key are the most funny. He succeeds at what he's trying to do. Also the strange twin brothers, are almost good. But the rest are forgettable.

Matt Letcher, which is sort of the main character, is doing most of the drama, and it does not work. You can see that he is trying to act in a realistic manner, and it is just embarrassing on his behalf. I think the director is to blame, though.

Teacher of the year is supposed to be a quirky, heart warming comedy- drama, (at least I think it is) but fails at both. There's some good talent here, but it does not work.

I really enjoyed this film because, as a teacher, I recognized archetypes and situations and felt that the writers had a good sense of the craziness that is teaching in high school. However, I found that the political issues surrounding public vs. private/independent vs. charter are glossed over and dealt with in a single scene, yet they expect intellectual investment from the audience without true discussion.

I also saw a serious rift between two separate aspects in the film. Thee is a serious plot, and a serious subplot. Questions of unions and stakeholders, finances and resources are all there. And, yes, there is a little bit of humor in there. But then there are the supporting characters, the other teachers who are so criminally negligent and ridiculous in what they do that it undercuts any realism in the major story arc. Yes, in a school some teachers are eccentric and if this mockumentary wants to show a teacher singing a silly song in class in an effort to increase scores, then that's great. But then, to show a teacher making students cry repeatedly, or counselors endorsing alcohol and drugs? That makes for a great moment in a complete parody, but not in a film which purports to show the serious side of things.

This film owes much to the Christopher Guest/Harry Shearer/Michael McKean/Rob Reiner school of films. The dry, low key humor and scenes that are just a touch awkward (one character actually references Spinal Tap). But then it also tries to be the movie "Teachers" (Nick Nolte) with its hard moral choices and complex central character and also "Police Academy" with its wacky and zany supporting players.

The good parts were great, the dumb parts were silly, but the movie was not a cohesive whole.

The Netflix rating for this movie is one out of five stars. It rates five out of five on Rotten Tomatoes, and 5.3 out of 10 here on IMDb. The fact that the reviews are all over the place almost surely reflects Americans' ambivalence about teachers and public schools (or charter schools that are publicly funded, like the one represented here). My husband and I, both longtime educators, thought that this mockumentary was the most authentic representation of our profession that we have seen. Teaching is tough. It's tough when your students do not respond to your efforts, and, yes, it is even tough when you are "Teacher of the Year."

Not that this is a humorless drama...not at all. It is hilarious because it captures how completely awkward and totally out of the box each day is when you work in this type of school. The teachers in this film display the full range of creativity, grit, anger, envy, compassion and depleted ego that comes with a high-intensity, socially essential job that is often completely disrespected and poorly remunerated.