Themes: Underdogs, Teachers and Students, Authority Figures
Main Cast: Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosanna de Soto, Andy Garcia, Will Gotay
Release Year: 1988
Country: US
Run Time: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
Edward James Olmos portrays the real-life Jaime Escalante, a no-nonsense mathematic teacher in a tough East LA high school. Handed a classroom full of "losers" and "unteachables," Escalante is determined to turn his young charges' lives around. Drawing from his own cultural heritage, Escalante forms a bond with his largely Hispanic student body, evoking the names of famous Spaniards and Latin Americans whose great accomplishments were predicated on their ability to learn. The students gradually come to realize that the only way they'll escape their own poverty-stricken barrio is to improve themselves intellectually. As a result, the class' academic achievements soar dramatically -- too dramatically for the Educational Testing Service, which is convinced that the class' high test scores are the results of cheating. The triumphant exoneration of Escalante's students provides Stand and Deliver with its rousingly upbeat conclusion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Forsaking cornball sentimentality for a straight-ahead depiction of its subject, this true-life drama from PBS's superb American Playhouse not surprisingly plays a bit too much like a made-for-television movie, or even an adaptation of a play. Despite this drawback, the film's not-so-secret weapon is an awfully impressive one: A legendary, Oscar-nominated performance from star Edward James Olmos, who "delivers" easily the best work of his journeyman career, transforming his figure, face, hair, gait, and voice to portray a man who's just about literally all intellect. Lou Diamond Phillips provides ample support, and the script from director Ramon Menendez and producer Tom Musca moves with agility back and forth between developments in the classroom and in the lives of the students and their teacher. It all gets wrapped up a bit too quickly and the answers to a few pertinent questions seem to have been left on the cutting room floor, but for sheer acting power and uplift without bathos, the film's a definite success. Stand and Deliver swept the Independent Spirit Awards the year of its release, winning a half-dozen of the major categories including Best Feature and Director. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Ingrid Oliu - Lupe; Michael Adler - Schloss; Carmen Argenziano - Molina; Patrick Baca - Javier; Betty Carvalho - Angel's Grandmother; Mark Eliot - Tito; Mark Everett - Heavy Metal Boy; Michael Goldfinger - Coach; Estelle Harris - Secretary; Rif Hutton - Pearson; Tyde Kierney - Joe Goodell; Irene Olga Lopez - Lupe's Mother; Dominic Lucero - Ganas Kid; Vanessa Marquez - Ana; Karla Montana - Claudia; Lydia Nicole - Rafaela; Virginia Paris - Raquel Ortega; Mark Phelan - Cop; James Victor - Ana's Father; Daniel Villarreal - Chuco; Michael Yama - Sanzaki; David Brian Abalos - Ganas Kid; Adelaide Alvarez - Sexy Girl; Irma Barrios - Ganas Kid; Aixa Clemente - Hospital Receptionist; Yvette Cruise - Claudia's Mother; Phillip Elizalde - Ganas Kid; Star Frohman - Female Cop; Sonia Fuentes - Ganas Kid; Graham Galloway - Craig; Victor Garron - Jaime Escalante, Jr.; Beatrice Giraldo - Ganas Kid; Richard Moreno - Ganas Kid; Bodie Olmos - Fernando Escalante; Jessica Seynos - Ganas Kid; Henry Torres - Ganas Kid; Barbara Vera - Proctor; Richard Martinez - Heavy Metal Boy
Credit
Areni Milo - Art Director, Milo - Art Director, Iya Labunka - Associate Producer, Jaki Brown - Casting, Kathryn Morrison - Costume Designer, Elliot Lewis Rosenblatt - First Assistant Director, Ramon Menendez - Director, Robert Leighton - Editor, Nancy Richardson - Editor, Lidsay Law - Executive Producer, Craig Safan - Composer (Music Score), Steve George - Songwriter, John Lang - Songwriter, Richard Page - Songwriter, Vered Hochman - Makeup, Dee Mansano - Makeup, Dennis Washington - Production Designer, Milo - Production Designer, Tom Richmond - Cinematographer, Ray Gideon - Producer, Bruce A. Evans - Producer, Lidsay Law - Producer, Tom Musca - Producer, Andrew Scheinman - Producer, Stephen Halbert - Sound/Sound Designer, Ramon Menendez - Screenwriter, Tom Musca - Screenwriter
Based on a true story, this low budget movie opens with the background of East L.A in 1982. In an environment that values a quick fix over education and learning, Jaime A. Escalante (Olmos) is a new teacher at James A. Garfield High School in Los Angeles County, California determined to change the system and challenge the students to a higher level of achievement. Leaving a steady job for a position as a math teacher in a school where rebellion runs high and teachers are more focused on discipline than academics, Escalante is at first not well liked by students, receiving numerous taunts and threats. As the year progresses, he is able to win over the attention of the students by implementing innovative teaching techniques, using props and humor to illustrate abstract concepts of math and convey the necessity of math in everyday lives. He is able to transform even the most troublesome teens to dedicated students. While Escalante teaches math 1A, basic arithmetic, he realizes that his students have far more potential so he decides to teach them calculus. To do so, he holds a summer course of what is implied in the movie as pre-calculus material, such as advanced algebra, math analysis, and trigonometry. Calculus starts in the students' senior year.
Despite concerns and skepticism of other teachers, who feel that "you can't teach logarithms to illiterates", Escalante nonetheless develops a program in which his students can eventually take AP Calculus by their senior year, which will give them credit toward college. This intense math program requires that students take summer classes, including Saturdays from 7:00 AM to noon, taxing for even the most devoted among them. While other students spend their summers working or becoming teenage parents, Escalante's students learn complex theorems and formulas. The vast contrast between home life and school life, however, begins to show as these teens struggle to find the balance between what other adults and especially their parents expect of them and the goals and ambitions they hold for themselves. With Escalante to help them, they soon find the courage to separate from society's expectations for failure and rise to the standard to which Escalante holds them.
Taking the AP Calculus exam in the spring of their senior year, these students are relieved and overjoyed to be finished with a strenuous year. After receiving their scores, they are overwhelmed with emotion to find that they have all passed, a feat done by few in the state. Later that summer a shocking accusation is made: the Educational Testing Service calls into question the validity of their scores when it is discovered that similarities between errors is too high for pure chance. Outraged by the implications of cheating, Escalante feels that the racial and economic status of the students has caused the ETS to doubt their intelligence. In order to prove their mathematical abilities and worth to the school, to the ETS, and to the nation, the students agree to retake the test at the end of the summer, months after their last class. The students are given only one day to prepare and Escalante gravely tells them that the test will be harder than the first. The students all pass and Escalante tells the school principal that he wants his students' original scores reinstated.
Influence
The film's premise was satirized in the South Park episode "Eek, A Penis!" with Eric Cartman adopting the moniker "Eric Cartmenez" to teach cheating at calculus to inner-city youth.
