[ad_1]
Stop me if you’ve seen this before: a free-spirited teacher engages a classroom full of disadvantaged youth and unleashes their true potential. This stale and sometimes condescending premise is recycled in Christopher Zalla’s “Radical,” a sentimental drama based on a true story but carefully packaged in familiar packaging. The title is almost contradictory: it boldly belies how close the film is to convention.
Set in a low-income school in Matamoros, Mexico, the film follows the development of a group of eighth grade students after Sergio (Eugenio Derbez) transfers as their teacher. Attracting the sidelong glance of his classmates (“the key is to discipline them,” one advises), Sergio adopts a novel method: he lets the students direct their education and encourages them to seek knowledge through experiments and games.
Sergio’s approach is admirable. But the script boils down each of his students into a single prominent problem: the one who has ties to gangs; the one who has to take care of the younger siblings; the impoverished person whose shyness hides genius. The film uses the trope of the angelic, wise inner-city child waiting for an encouraging mentor. (One of Sergio’s students builds a telescope with remains from a pile of garbage).
“Do you want to learn from books or from life?” a gun-toting gang member asks one of the kids early in the film, vocalizing the only two paths this film allows for its young cast. Despite its foundation in reality, “Radical” is as based on the books as it seems.
Radical
Rated PG-13 for some gang violence, lots of bombast. Duration: 2 hours 5 minutes. On cinemas.