I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

I was born and raised from a working class family in Chicago. I am also a Whitney Young alumni. Take one look at the school's website and you will learn that whites are the minority and that most people are from low SES or middle class backgrounds. This film's depiction of the Whitney Young was waaaaay off. Cheerleaders at the pep rally, matching outfits, and laptops for every student...LMAO! After viewing this film, I now understand what it's like to be on the other side of those "based on a true story" movies.In this movie there had to be an enemy. So, Whitney Young played the role. However, the real evil is the school system. But no one wants to talk about that. What this film displayed was the selfish and lazy attitudes of the cheaters, and their need to justify their behavior by blaming the kids who worked hard and won. (If people only knew the amount of time they put into studying for AD) What we should be paying attention to is how easy the children took almost no responsibility for what they did. Instead, transferring the blame to the opposing school. Rather, the film should have told the story of how a teacher took advantage of weak-willed teenagers to boost his ego, counter his life of inadequacy. He could have been a voice for the oppressed but chose to take the easy road and let the kids down.

I've seen this movie today on DVD and i found more than i expected. It's a great movie. Not only it deals with students who cheat and a teacher who helps them, but also the differences in a society. We say every one is equal, but this movie shows us that some are more equal. I totally agree with the idea that this things would never come up if those students were in a better school in a better part of the city. Let's face it. There is still discrimination among people. I don't approve cheating, but i got no harm from cheating. In this movie, we see that we can come over this discrimination even if we have to cheat. The fact is if they had taken that boy to the team, no one could claim they cheated. So it would be possible to cheat the system.

I attended Whitney Young H.S. and was a member of the 1st Whitney Young Academic Decathlon team in 1982; the first year this competition was nationalized. I was very interested to see this movie as I did not even realize Whitney Young had continued to win the Illinois competition.Had it not been for the misrepresentations in this movie, I probably would have given it a much better rating.For those outside of the Chicago area, basically Whitney Young AND Steinmetz are BOTH Chicago Public high schools. The difference is that Whitney Young is a magnet school, where you apply and get accepted on the basis of merit of your grades in elementary school, whereas Steinmetz is a district school which accepts anybody who lives in the neighborhood. Whitney Young is NOT a privileged school filled with rich kids (some of the people making comments, after seeing this movie, even had the impression that it might be private and/or suburban.) The overwhelming majority of my classmates were minorities, with nearly 70% black. As a matter of fact, there were probably more minorities at Whitney Young than Steinmetz, which is located in a white neighborhood on the north side of the city. I was disgusted by the Jeff Daniels' rant implying that rich suburbans were sending their kids into the city to attend a public high school; some line about this school being a "fortress in the city" -- The majority of kids who attend Whitney Young are from middle class and poor families. I just could not believe that Hollywood could stoop so low, to portray high achieving public inner city public school city kids as privileged snobs, for the apparent purpose of getting the audience to sympathize more with the Steinmetz kids .. to make us feel that the kids being cheated deserved to be cheated.And Whitney Young having cheerleaders at this event .. PLEASE .. that's just insulting the intelligence of the viewers.The reason that Whitney Young would consistently beat out other Chicago schools year after year is very simple: There is a system in place in Chicago with centralized magnet schools such as Young, Lane Tech, where all of the A students from grade schools across the city can attend and be in classes with each other ... for the purpose of having enough kids in the same place to provide advanced courses.The professor at Steinmetz who helped his students cheat, basically tried to cheat kids at another school who worked VERY hard to earn their spot, and that stinks. This film did a very good job at desensitizing the audience about the injustice done to the kids who actually EARNED the win, in order to help add sympathy to the Steinmetz students who were NOT underprivileged, but simply chose either NOT to apply to Whitney Young, or simply did not work for the grades to get into Whitney Young in the first place.The movie tries to make you feel sympathy for the cheaters, rather than the victims of the cheating. What a wonderful message for America.

It's scary and it's shocking what one school had to go through just to be the best. Did i agree with what they did? no. but look at they had everything short of mini bar's and a juice room they had all the latest stuff and this one school is struggling just to keep running. These students, these kids were determined to be the best no matter what i took. It is a great movie and a good yet sad story of how these kids were driven to cheat and how they just wanted to feel and to know what it was like at the top. Recommended for those who want to watch something new a fresh! ~!