Frontrunners.

"The great American student-government election: teenagers exposing their fragile egos to public ballot-box rejection and spending a small fortune on poster board, all for the possible distinction of assigning Homecoming subcommittees and allocating school funds for a laminator." Nick Pinkerton in the Voice: "This is the stuff of which Frontrunners is made." Director Caroline Suh "shows herself ever-happy to settle for the shallow rewards of pop documentary. Depending on your level of fatigue with The Other Campaign, this may be good enough."

"To its credit, Frontrunners doesn't strive to generate more suspense than the situation merits, which isn't much," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Politically and emotionally, the movie's thermostat remains at medium cool."

Updated through 10/17.

"In following Stuyvesant's presidential elections, Caroline Suh's Frontrunners is less a documentary version of Alexander Payne's Election and more a junior version of Primary or The War Room," writes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "Thus what one student half-mockingly refers to as 'Stuyvesant High School for gifted young men and women such as ourselves' isn't so much a Manhattan microcosm of the American electoral process as one small scramble amongst the best of the best, each of them trying to better their chances of admission to Harvard and to secure their future among the elite.... So, when George blasts 'Baba O'Reilly' from a jukebox while handing out election propaganda to prospective voters, the irony is clear: Stuyvesant is not a teenage wasteland at all, but a bountiful pasture of Ivy Leaguers-to-be."

Writing in the L Magazine, Nick McCarthy finds the film to be "a politically relevant but sociologically inept doc... Frontrunners is neither edifying nor provocative; it's a simple, connect-the-parallels documentary with an expiration date of November 5th."

Update, 10/16: "Everyone here is elite, and yet each student is also a child in the last phase of social innocence," writes Armond White in the New York Press. "That was also the charm of John Hughes's classic teen movies Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off that have been twisted into acquisitive fantasies. The marvel of Frontrunners comes from watching potential movers-and-shakers who don't quite know themselves yet."

Updates, 10/17: "For the most part, what happens in Frontrunners doesn't matter much," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "These are privileged teens bound for good schools no matter what happens, and they all seem mature enough to handle a loss. But what makes the movie fascinating is the particulars of the campaigns, from the way the candidates consider how to choose a running mate that will appeal to the right cliques, to the way they discuss exactly how a win would improve their chances to get into a top college. In the end, their main concern is how to be outstanding in a field overrun with bright flowers."

"To reflect the current political climate, these students would need to mount vicious smear campaigns and repeat talking points that insult the intelligence of their electorate," notes David Fear in Time Out New York. "Frontrunners is a decent chronicle of one small-scale local runoff; expect anything more, and you’ll feel like you’ve just entered the spin zone."

"The film operates on two important levels, both of which tell us all we need to know about the state of our democracy," writes Tom Hall at Hammer to Nail. "First, the film presents us with a field of candidates, each of whom we implicitly support because we recognize that they are kids, that we would like to see each of them have the opportunity to succeed and reach their goal of becoming a leader. There is something inside of us that loves a leader, that is inspired by seeing someone seek the office. We don't question the office, we merely judge those who seek it. Second, when we are left with the choice between Hannah and George, it's surprising how both candidates tickle a different part of the American dream."

Posted by dwhudson at October 15, 2008 1:48 PM