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Reviews Counted:26
Fresh:22
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7/10
Consensus: Frontrunners offers poignant insights into the high school power structure, with more than a few parallels to the current U.S. election.
Theatrical Release:Oct 15, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Frontrunners is a smart and funny political documentary that follows the student council presidential campaign at one of the country’s most prestigious public high schools: Stuyvesant High School... [More]
Director: Caroline Suh
Even an offhand debate between a few students late in the film about whether or not Bush is a "retard," while not exactly insightful, nonetheless portrays a student body for whom politics%u2014or at least arguing about it%u2014is essential.
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The film accurately captures the world of adolescence. But emotionally and intellectually the film walks down the center stripe, picking up little insights while remaining bogged down in blandness.
The film sets just the right tone: with inventive music choices and wonderfully piquant moments plucked from what must have been hundreds of hours of footage, Frontrunners is consistently entertaining.
Top CriticPerhaps it's the bright, decent, appealing kids seen here, or just the idyllic portrait Suh paints of student life at Manhattan's prestigious Stuyvesant High School that gives the picture its charm.
Top CriticThe kids now know how to play the game of college admissions, but they seem more jaded by their knowledge than entitled to success. And their exasperation with the process, their peers, and themselves is endlessly, illuminatingly watchable.
Top CriticSure, it's a skewed view through adolescent eyes, but it's one that still speaks to the aspirations, agendas, image-making and spin control behind a real, grown-up political election.
Top CriticThis film couldn't come out in a better time, in a better year.
The student election plays out as a microcosm of the race for the Oval Office.
Top CriticThese candidates work hard and play fair, and when they screw up or slack off, they accept the consequences without complaint. Simply because, they believe, that's the way things should be done.
Top Criticwhat 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 how a win would improve their chances to get into a top college.
Suh reassures us that democracy is alive and well (dispelling the myth of the apathetic young voter), while making us pause to consider the kind of people who emerge from the system.
In sum, Frontrunners is like the famous New Yorker magazine cover that shows the Big Apple looming in the foreground and the rest of the country as insignificant specks in the distance.
an ebullient celebration of the arcane democratic impulse in this country
A simply-made yet entertaining doc that has a similar appeal as Alexander Payne's Election while following in the vein of docs like American Teen and Spellbound.
If you're looking for meaningful parallels with the current monumental election don't bother, but it's hard not to enjoy a movie where the primary pundit sports a Flava Flav t-shirt.
Ultimately, pic's fascination lies with the personalities and strategies of the candidates themselves.
Top CriticFrontrunners is a perfect antidote to the current overly staged presidential election spectacle. It shames the dishonest teen portrait of the recent doc American Teen.
Without forcing comparisons, Frontrunners finds parallels between the election at Stuyvesant High and the current national election.
Top CriticThese politicians may be teens, but they grapple with constituencies, campaign strategies, and demands on their time with a spirit and seriousness of purpose suitable for the highest office in the land.
Top Critic
October 05, 2008:
Trailer & Poster review 
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