BEFORE: Scarlett Johansson carries over again from "Under the Skin" to her last film of the year. As I've pointed out before, this is the path that would have allowed me to watch "Black Widow" in theaters, only I'm here and the film isn't, it's been very publicly delayed until next year. That film would have been my link to 2019's "Hellboy" reboot, which is now also delayed for me until 2021. And I was therefore forced to find another path to Christmas movies and the end of 2020's 300 films, which I have now done. Eight slots left this year, and I know how I want to fill them, and the chain will be unbroken, until I start fresh again next January. (But even though I can't connect from here to "Black Widow", I would still like to clear today's film off my books, and I'll worry about next year's connections later.)
After this posts, we'll be driving to upstate New York (OK, mid-upstate) for a couple days, our first real road-trip since the pandemic started. Just a couple days at a casino, maybe some nice restaurants or brew-pubs, whatever we can find. We can have fun anywhere, even during these troubled times. We still have to be careful, because this pandemic's not over, but upstate NY seems relatively safe compared with other parts of the country. We haven't turned the corner yet, not by any stretch of the imagination, but I think now we're set up to do the work to maybe approach that corner, so we can turn it one day.
Before leaving, I took a little time yesterday to do some of those tasks around the house to get ready for winter, like replacing the screen in the door with the glass pane, and sweeping up the leaves in the lower driveway, because if I don't do that once in a while, they can clog the drain and then heavy rain or melting snow might build up and leak into the basement. Even there, I found a political metaphor, because I was thinking about drains, and how someone who promised to "drain the swamp" did nothing even close to that, and instead hired a bunch of corrupt people for government positions who all then turned on him, as they should. And the person vowing to drain the swamp was in fact the biggest clog in the whole drain, and now that the drain is unclogged, maybe things can start flowing again, as they should. We'll see.
THE PLOT: Six high school seniors decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores.
AFTER: I'm going to try my best to not connect this film to the election, because that was never the plan, plus I had "Jojo Rabbit" already this week, and that was enough, connecting Trump to Hitler. Plus there's no confirmed voter fraud, nobody tried to rig this election, as far as we know, except of course for the guy who was complaining the loudest about voter fraud and which votes were bogus because they were counted after the deadline (even though they arrived before). Nice try, a-hole, but we've had four years to figure you out and now all the smart people know when you're lying. My concern, of course, is that not everyone in the country falls into that "smart" group, which explains why the worst President ever still got like 47% of the votes cast. Think about the term "average intelligence", and then realize half of the voters in this country are dumber than that. That's just math.
It's time to move on, I need to get to a place where not every movie reminds me of Trump and what a terrible collective choice got made four years ago. Here's to brighter days ahead, but at the same time this is when the real work has to begin, not just uniting the country (or trying to) but really taking on the virus for the first time, using science and trying to get everybody on board with that. Over 40% of the country may not play along, because they've been lied to for so long, and those lies were easier, more seductive, and ultimately representing a dark path lined with bigotry and racism and laziness, and it's going to be hard to get some people off of that road. Still, we have to try, with a leader that has some interest in, you know, leading, doing the work, we may have a chance. A slim one, but doing something seems better than doing nothing but playing golf and eating KFC.
Here comes the segue - tonight's film is also about taking the easier path, passing the SAT exam by getting an advanced look at the answers. Of course this is wrong, I think the film makes that clear at both the beginning and the end, cheating is wrong. But then the film comes close to maybe almost justifying the actions of breaking into the test center and getting the master answer key, because traditionally the SAT might be statistically biased against some minorities, possibly women, and also dumb people, if you think about it. (If you think about it, nearly every test is biased against dumb people, and there are a lot of them.). But even if this fact is true, that the test is biased, does that justify cheating? No, it does not - because there are things that students can do to improve their scores, like taking a prep course, or studying, or taking the test several times. It's possible to get better at math and verbal skills, it just takes time and practice and a will to succeed.
Am I biased on this point? Probably - I never had too much trouble in high school, unless you count P.E. of course. I knew I wasn't the smartest person in my grade (this was perhaps only true in elementary school) and I wasn't going to be the valedictorian, but I survived a full complement of Advanced Placement courses, and standardized tests were a breeze for me. Even if I didn't know the answer outright, I was a pretty good guesser - if you can eliminate one or more of the multiple choice answers, your odds improve substantially. I might have been the best test-taker my high school ever had, if I can boast for just a minute. When the PSAT results came in during junior year, another "A" student and I got called to the office, and I just knew it would be for a good reason. I think I got 710/740 on the PSAT, and I ended up getting a small college scholarship from that (not enough for NYU tuition, but hey, every little bit helps). I took the SAT itself only once, got 670/750 and figured that would be good enough for film school.
This is where "The Perfect Score" almost makes a good point about the test, because the lead character wants to study architecture at Cornell, and perhaps neither his math or verbal scores from the SAT should be held against him when applying for an architecture program. But then again, I can see how math might be important to building planning, making blueprints and such. But as we know, and the film ignores, the SAT score is only one of several things that college admission officers will consider, there's also overall GPA, extracurricular activities, community service, teacher recommendations, and the all-important essay questions. All college plans should also include multiple applications, safety schools, and back-ups for the back-ups. Just saying. Anyone who says, "I need to go to THAT school and study THAT program" could be setting themselves up for a fall - plus, many people also change careers and end up working in a different field than the one they studied for.
The SAT is merely a marker on the road, it's not a destination. So before breaking in to the testing facility to ace the exam, perhaps these six conspirators should have weighed the benefit against the potential drawbacks a little more carefully. What would happen if they got caught, wouldn't that be a greater negative mark on their permanent record, worse than "failed the exam on the first try"? Again, I propose that a smarter, more sensible plan would have been for these six students to form a study group, because as we learn late in the picture, they actually have a math genius and a verbal expert already among them, so why didn't somebody suggest this as a viable plan? Huge NITPICK POINT. Some of the reasons for banding together and stealing the answers are also quite stupid - the "A" level student couldn't complete the SAT test because there was a math question about a woman and a man getting on separate trains, and she got so caught up in their "story" that she couldn't do the math problem. Are you kidding me? This sounds more like she has ADHD than anything else, and a little Ritalin could clear that right up.
Meanwhile, the motivations of some of the other characters are just as suspect - the star basketball player is the secret math genius, but apparently he's concerned about the verbal section, and what his mother will do to him if he doesn't get a good enough score to get into St. John's University. OK, but getting caught cheating would also get him into trouble, so is it really worth the risk? Another character's father works for Educational Testing Services, so perhaps she's just got daddy issues. And the stoner character seems to just be along for the ride, because it's "something to do". This all feels like lazy, lazy screenwriting if you ask me. Plus it's so very convenient that their high school just happens to be in the same town as the company that creates and monitors the exam nationwide. Also very lazy, what are the odds of this, how many cities and towns are there in the U.S.?
It's a little odd here to see the future Captain America actor and the future Black Widow actress working together to do something wrong. But then again, it's a team heist movie at its core, and is a team superhero movie really that different in the end? What doesn't really ring true is that in the end, nearly every character here finds a different reason to NOT cheat on the test. WHAT? After all that pseudo-justification for doing the wrong thing, everybody suddenly has a change of heart and decides to do the right thing? I find that hard to believe - and again, couldn't they have just buckled down and studied in the first place, which would have saved everybody, especially me, a great deal of time and aggravation? If only these kids had spent their time learning how to prepare for the test, instead of figuring out how to break into the testing center, they would have all been much better off.
I know, I know, that wouldn't have made for a very interesting movie, but I think in the end it's the best moral lesson to walk away from the film with. Everyone needs to buckle down, put in the time and do the work in order to achieve success. There are (or at least should be) no shortcuts in life.
NITPICK POINT #2: Darius Miles is a real NBA player, so I can understand why he's not a great actor, and his delivered lines are a bit difficult to understand, or believe. OK, so then why can I say the same thing about Scarlett Johansson and Erika Christensen?
NITPICK POINT #3: Once the team is in the ETS office, and they realize they can't print out the answer sheet, why was the solution to spend hours taking the entire test together, which still would have resulted in them collectively being unsure about the answers? Wouldn't it have been easier to call up the answer sheet on the computer screen and then write THAT down? I would say, "Why not just take photos of the test questions on the screen?", but this film was released JUST a bit before smartphones with cameras were a thing. Still, taking the test would take hours, a time period that could have allowed for a security sweep to find them, while just jotting down the letters of the answer would probably take 30 minutes, tops. Just saying.
Also starring Chris Evans (last seen in "Knives Out"), Erika Christensen (last seen in "The Banger Sisters"), Bryan Greenberg (last seen in "Bride Wars"), Darius Miles, Leonardo Nam (last seen in "Vantage Point"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Serial Mom"), Fulvio Cecere (last seen in "No Reservations"), Vanessa Angel (last seen in "King of New York"), Lorena Gale (last seen in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"), Tyra Ferrell (last seen in "Tapeheads"), Bill Mackenzie, Dan Zukovic, Iris Quinn (last seen in "The Twilight Saga; Eclipse"), Lynda Boyd (last seen in "The Age of Adaline"), Serge Houde (ditto), Michael Ryan, Robert Clarke (last seen in "Code Name: The Cleaner"), Kyle Labine, Alf Humphreys, Mike Jarvis, Steve Makaj (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Jay Brazeau (last seen in "Horns"), Rebecca Reichert.
RATING: 4 out of 10 password guesses
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