Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman might as well be titled An Inconvenient Truth: The Sequel. Like Guggenheim’s previous, Oscar-winning documentary about the eroding state of our global environment, this is yet another horror film in the guise of a documentary. A rallying cry to educational reform, the film takes its name from a comment by celebrated education reformer Geoffrey Canada, who believed in Superman as a child and was distraught when he grew older and discovered there was “no one coming with enough power to save us.”

No matter where you come down on the issue of America’s education system, it is impossible not to acknowledge that the system is broken. Just 30 years ago, American schools were the envy of the world, but this year alone, hundreds of thousands of students will drop out. Many will end up in prison. Those that don’t, face a lifetime of dead end jobs. The students that make it to the end will graduate with an elementary school reading level and math and science proficiency among the worst in the world.

Waiting for Superman follows five charismatic kids of differing geography, age, gender, race and circumstance who all have big dreams but even bigger hurdles—schools so bad they’re referred to as “dropout factories.” In each case, they have caring parents who want their kids to have better lives than they’ve led, but are often too busy or exhausted to offer much help. Bombarding us with statistic after statistic, it doesn’t take Guggenheim long to point the finger at teachers’ unions as the primary obstacle to reform. While Guggenheim admits that the unions began with the best of intentions, he says they now exist only to serve themselves.

Guggenheim extols leaders like Geoffrey Canada, D.C. schools’ chancellor Michelle Rhee and the thousands of teachers with big dreams of reform that were dashed by a seemingly intractable bureaucracy. (Ironically, the nation’s capitol is one of the worst educational offenders. Rhee, whose sweeping reforms are starting to reflect the first successes D.C. has seen in decades, is more than likely just days away from getting her pink slip; she made the mistake of believing that when the people cried out, “For God’s sake, do whatever it takes to save us!,” they actually meant it.)

Waiting for Superman touts charter academies as paradigms of reform, the standard bearers for what the public system could achieve if it truly put its heart and mind to it. But even these educational Camelots come with a price—with so few of them to choose from, the fight to be among those who get accepted is fierce. To level the playing field, the schools institute lotteries, game show style initiations that turn the climax of the film and the fate of the kids we’ve been following, into a tension-filled, heart-rending nail biter.

Guggenheim is an advocacy filmmaker and, as with his other films, he ends Waiting for Superman with a plea for audience involvement. Money is not the answer. Even an infusion of new teachers, critical as that is, is not the answer. The only way we are going to reverse this trend is if you and I roll up our shirtsleeves and get into the muck. To his credit, his pitch, petrifying though it is, works like gangbusters. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I strode from the theater fantasizing about tossing my career aside and hacking my way into the blackboard jungle. Such is the need. Such is the power of the call.

© Copyright 2010 Brandon Fibbs. All rights reserved.

Directed by Davis Guggenheim
Starring: The Black family, The Esperaza family, The Hill family, Geoffrey Canada, Michelle Rhee
Rated PG for some thematic material, mild language and incidental smoking.
Running Time: 102 minutes