Waiting For Superman
Written and Directed by Davis Guggenheim
Participant Media
Release date: September 24, 2010

If director Davis Guggenheim‘s previous film, An Inconvenient Truth, was America’s wake-up call to the global warming crisis, then his latest effort, Waiting for Superman, is a cry for help to save America’s public school system.

The U.S. public school system is in trouble. Despite the signing of The No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 to improve public education as a whole, the results have been less than stellar. Overall test scores across the states are still at an all-time low, drop-out rates keeping increasing, and some schools still can’t provide basic supplies for their classrooms. So how did it get so wrong? And is it too late to fix this broken institution?

Despite the film’s sometimes grim and always serious tone, the information is presented to the audience in an informative and digestible format. Using cartoon animation, one on one interviews, and kitchy archival footage, the documentary is never boring even if it does feel like a product from the Michael Moore school of documentary filmmaking.