Deliciously appalling true tale of massive embezzlement at the top rungs of a suburban New York school district, led by Hugh Jackman’s charismatic, seemingly picture perfect superintendent: charmer, problem solver, desirable widower; backed by Welker White as his highly creative accounts manager, who generously shares her ill-gotten qains with the family. This HBO movie won Best Pic Emmy, but leaves too much dramatic potential on the desk in home room. Not that it doesn’t work, but director Cory Finley, in his second feature, feints when he needs to jab.* So conventionally laid out, it might be a film from 2002, which is when the events occurred. Not a bad idea, but hard to tell if that’s what Finley was aiming for. What does come across is how everyone’s putting up a facade of some sort; Jackman most of all. A gay quasi-husband (legal marriage yet to come) to a longtime partner he shares a Park Avenue apartment with, there’s also a much younger lover living in Las Vegas. (A very good perf from, I think, Calvin Coakley, looking a bit like young Brendan Fraser’s kid brother, yet Coakley has no further credits listed on IMDb.) Geraldine Viswanathan, who plays the student reporter at the school newspaper, ought to be having a better time than she shows. Why so dour? She’s breaking real news and feeling empowered just when the film needs a bit of sass & pinpricking moxie against Jackman’s powerhouse plays. His lack of vanity as an actor at showing his character’s utter absorption in personal vanity quite the show. But the film needs more counterweight on the right side of things.
DOUBLE-BILL: *Try Alexander Payne’s ELECTION/’99, with Reese Witherspoon & Matthew Broderick, to get an idea of what's missing.
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