Chalk (dir. Mike Akel)

2007, 81 minutes
w/ Troy Schremmer, Janelle Schremmer, Chris Mass
[Films like Chalk remind me why I find cinema so fascinating; movies as tiny as this exist with little to no buzz and no even notable actor/crew member, yet is able to be found and most of all enjoyed by anyone who looks hard enough. While often considered a mockumentary on teachers, I'd prefer to call it a faux-doc with definite satirical themes. As funny and awkward as it can be, Chalk's greatest achievement is presenting four genuinely interesting characters/people that defy cliche you may expect from their appearance or behavior in quiet moments or video diaries at home. Written and directed by real teachers (Akel on both, Mass co-writing and starring as an uber-competitive teacher), Chalk is full of moments that any high school student or teacher of the last fifteen years will immediately recognize and find both hilarious (there are few "LOLz!" but many Seinfeld chuckles) and difficult to watch. The acting by the four leads is fantastic and benefits from their fresh faces. Troy Schremmer manages to steal the show, though, as an awkward, insecure, unsure first year history teacher who finds himself overwhelmed by his rowdy students. The entire film is essentially a string of excellent scenes, but ones that stand out are a Happy Hour hang out that sees the teachers at their loosest, and a newly hired AP chasing down a run-away student through the halls, walkie-talkie in hand. I was especially impressed by a scene I thought was doomed from the start; in a TV-movie last year, The Ron Clark Story, Matthew Perry came up with the idea to rap his lessons to his students so as to try to relate. While it obviously achieved its targeted awkwardness, it wasn't all that believable in execution or in the students' reactions. Near the end of Chalk, a shyer black girl calmy raps as a boy pounds a beat out on his desk, and I was thinking "don't...ask the teacher....to rap." Sure enough, the question came up and Troy Schremmer comes up with an embarrassed, light-hearted half-rap/half-conversation with his students, unpretentious and hard to believe its not real, and then ends without asking any questions. Unfortunately this is only the tip of the iceberg that is Chalk, a short but subjectively rewarding and objectively clever picture that would become a Ron Clark Story or Freedom Writers if handled by Hollywood producers.]

***1/4