Flyerplesys Perfectly adorable

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

ltlacey I had to keep reminding myself that this was in fact not a real documentary since what I was seeing was what I saw going on for years within the public school system (this was in 3 different states) as an educator then as a substitute. And I have known some people who thought this was a real documentary and then asking me if they should pull their kids out of public school and send them to a private school. Uh...private is not a lot better. As, if I recall, Drew Barrymore said, Been There. Done that. Got the T-Shirt. Try home schooling! :) All in all, this was a good movie that showed the inside workings of a public high school and was right on the money, even down to a teacher who has a major meltdown and throws something across the room. Or teachers that back-stab one another. The Play By the Rules Only teacher. The teachers who are intimidated by students, which happens more often than reported since a lot of those high school kids are huge... and scary. The administrative staff who has issues and problems coming at them from all sides, 24/7. What was not shown in the movie was how little teachers get paid and how that impacts their lives. I would have liked to see one of them being shown having to hold down a 2nd job in order to pay the bills (which is true for a lot of teachers, especially those who are single). This movie is a definite Must See for anyone with kids in school, be it public, private, religious, or even those that do home school, as well as educators, anyone working within the education system, and those thinking about majoring in education. Big wake-up call. Next movie out by Spurlock et al. should be about nurses. Now, that will scare the you-know-what out of you.

philly-30 When I saw Morgan Spurlock was producing this, I thought I would check it out. I like Morgan's take on his documentary making, so, with his name attached, I thought it must be good.I started watching it, and something just seemed 'wrong'. All the teachers in it seemed to be like they were acting, and acting very badly. There is a 'fight' that takes place in the school yard, and the two people fighting look like they have never been in a fight before (and I mean that in it is so obviously a 'fake fight' it was terrible) and then a 'teacher' comes out to stop it...and it's just so phony! At this point, I looked the film up, to find out it was a 'mockumentary' and all the teachers WERE actors! The second half of the film was then 10 times worse, coz I knew the actors were acting, it really showed how bad they were at acting (I'm really using the term 'acting' here very loosely).From first impression, I thought this was going to be an insight in the American education system. Instead, I was shown bad acting, that seemed to make a mockery of the American education system. It's really not worth wasting your time on.

ambivalent2451-1 I think this movie is hilarious, although I question its mass market appeal. I've been teaching for five years and found the characters resembled many people I know; the students, too, were believable (I can't even count the number of times I have had to request that people stop making beats in class.) I particularly like Coach Webb's comment to the her now-administrator friend: Do you even remember how hard teaching is? This is a question every teacher I know longs to ask his or her administrative team.One thing that could have made the film funnier would be to play up the nonsensical bureaucratic bullsh** a teacher has to go through. I can think of several things off the top of my head that seem over the top but that I did, in fact, experience. Think "Office Space" meets education. However, I watched it with a non-teaching friend, and he was bored throughout....

ângelo fernandes This is a realistic portrait of what's the life of some teachers really is! Especially those moments that most of people don't realize they exist, like the teachers conversations on the Teachers Living Room; the disputes between them, the everyday challenges; the stress occasions with the kids, the "conquest" of the kids and the development of a mutual relationship, etc. As a teacher I saw myself in there portrayed, as I saw some of colleagues there too. Of course, that in a movie, which "pretends" to be as a documentary it can't summarize everything and all things in an hour and half [+/-] but still it is a great movie to see. I think what I did enjoyed more was the total absence of "this is good and this is wrong", that some movies are fulled in. In Chalk you can easily understand that are more than a simply reason to a teacher act in such way, be it good and less good.