Stand and Deliver (1988) review

Dir. Ramón Menéndez

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Math was always my weakest subject in grade school, and things didn’t get better for me come high school. One distinct memory from middle school (I believe it was seventh grade) when my teacher announced that she’d show a movie during the next two or three days of class — a rarity, movies were typically only shown in English and history classes. That movie was Stand and Deliver, but due to some language, we’d have to have our parents sign a permission slip allowing us to watch it.

Imagine me, of all people, forgetting to get that permission slip signed, and then having to sit out in the hall with another student during class for the next two-and-a-half-days. No worksheets, no homework; just two kids in our desks, which we dragged out to the hallway, as if we had gotten kicked out. Thankfully, I was friends with my fellow, neglectful peer, so those days in the hall were spent having lively conversations about school, movies (many of which R-rated, which we watched without our parents’ permission anyway), and video games (also far more violent and mature for our age).

Stand and Deliver has quietly lived in the back of my mind ever since. Not until last week did I finally go out of my way to watch it. I have no idea what I would’ve thought of it at roughly 12-years-old, but having not been well-versed in the “savior” genre of film, I can now see the irony of a math teacher playing the film in his/her math class instead of actively inspiring a class with their methods of teaching.

A wholesome, if forgettable dash of inspiration, based on true events, Stand and Deliver follows Jamie Escalante (Edward James Olmos), a math teacher assigned to an East Los Angeles, predominately Latino high school in order to try and lift their scores up to optimal level. Escalante reaches his students through unconventional practices. Not so much by talking down to them, but talking with them on their level. He makes the material relatable to their everyday lives, to try to break through their seemingly tough exteriors and rebellious nature. He outwits them in a way that they soon realize they’re, in fact, not going to outsmart their teacher, and that he actually cares about giving them a quality education.

In time, the students go from casually arriving late to class to electing to attend sessions on Saturday, and accepting extra homework assignments despite the fact that they surely have five or six other classes’ worth of work to do. Some of the students get time to develop outside of the classroom, such as Lou Diamond Phillips, whose motley crew of street-smart denizens start to look at him sideways when he’s seen carrying books in his backpack. The most interesting of these students is Ana Delgado (the late Vanessa Marquez), whose father would rather see her work at his restaurant than attend college. When Escalante shows up to his restaurant to confront him about that decision, praising Ana and suggesting she has a bright future that involves education, he is ornery and scoffs at what he perceives as disrespect. Apparently, Ana’s character is the only one in the movie to be based off of a real-life student, and the confrontation between Escalante and her father was just as hostile as is portrayed. That is, if you believe IMDb trivia.

After the summer courses prove the students are ready to tackle Advanced Placement Calculus, it all builds to Escalante readying the students to take an exam to test their college readiness. The students perform well on the test, but being that all of them got the same questions wrong, allegations of cheating are raised and investigators (Andy García and Rif Hutton) are put on the case.

As Roger Ebert outlined in his review, this is where Stand and Deliver becomes murky. The test, a scantron-style exam administered by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), are scored anonymously, and the identity of the student is only revealed if nefarious patterns are detected. There’s no reason to believe these students cheated on the basis that they went out of their way to prepare thanks to being motivated by their teacher. The only logical explanation for all the students getting the same questions wrong is the possibility that Escalante incorrectly taught some portion of the calculus unit.

Writers Ramón Menéndez (also director) and co-writer Tom Musca guide the story down the path where racism is the justification for why these East L.A. students’ tests are being treated as illegitimate. However, if the grading process was truly confidential, then there would be no validity to that, for the identities of the test-takers would’ve only then gotten revealed once it was discovered that all the students got the same answers incorrect. Stand and Deliver ends on an uplifting note because of course it does, but it never explains why the students all got the same questions wrong.

Stand and Deliver also makes the hokey Hollywood move of having the events happen way faster than they ever could’ve happened in real-life. It took the real-life Escalante years for his processes to gain legitimacy with the school board and other faculty members, and it wasn’t until multiple years at the high school did his students attempt any kind of AP test. Menéndez and Musca simplifies the story to show this all occurring over the course of a school year, an incredulous string of events to say the very least.

Even with Olmos’ stand-out, and eventually Oscar-nominated, performance, coupled with the slowburn approach that draws you into Escalante’s teaching practices gradually, Stand and Deliver is an oversimplified example of the savior teacher narrative. Asides involving the students’ home-lives don’t lend themselves to greater plot developments, nor does Escalante truly form a strong relationship with any of them (he doesn’t have his Will Hunting, let’s just say), rendering the connective human undertones of the film as weak.

This is a fine movie; one that might give a middle or high school math class a breather from algebra, fractals, slopes, and whatever-the-hell sine, cosine, and tangent does to numbers, but I surmise most students would benefit from unplugging all together. Having to isolate them out in the hallways for that is optional.

Starring: Edward James Olmos, Lou Diamond Phillips, Rosanna DeSoto, Vanessa Marquez, Andy García, and Rif Hutton. Directed by: Ramón Menéndez.