Get us in your inbox

The Providence Effect

  • Film
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Advertising

Time Out says

3 out of 5 stars

Swooning but shallow, this doc plays like a promotional commercial for Providence St. Mel, a private school on Chicago’s impoverished West Side that sends 100 percent of its graduates on to college. As the academy attempts to transplant its hands-on, zero-tolerance formula to a public charter school, filmmaker Rollin Binzer finds teachers, pupils and alumni eager to tout the school’s methods. But there’s no meaningful dissection of what sets these classrooms apart, or how its disciplinary and teachers’ union troubles find resolution. We’re happy for the departing seniors, but clueless as to how Providence got through to some and not others.—S. James Snyder

Opens Fri.

More new Film reviews

Advertising
You may also like
You may also like