80
Can't get the kids in your life to pay enough attention to homework? Show them Tom Shepard's terrific documentary, and you might just light a fire.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
This quietly absorbing film is finally more about character formation--curiosity, persistence, endurance--than about achievement as a means to some extrinsic social end.
80
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
It's the candid moments of joy and accomplishment -- Welcker finding out she's an Intel contest finalist, Khan learning he's been accepted to Yale, high school valedictorian Cisneros thanking her devoted parents in her graduation speech -- that really make this one soar.
70
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Tom Shepard's quietly observant documentary tracks its stressed-out subjects through an array of personal and scholarly challenges.
60
So even though the science fair was something your other classmates did while you mastered Pitfall!, the sights in Whiz Kids will no doubt stir you.
50
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Though the film seems less like a theatrical release and more like something that might play on an obscure PBS station at 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, it's reasonably interesting as a personality study.
70
Nominally structured around the Intel Science Talent Search, Whiz Kids traces a dual process: the empowerment of economically challenged students who otherwise might not realize their potential, and the empowerment of the nation through the problem-solving efforts of its best and brightest.
60
Boxoffice Magazine by Tim Cogshell
It is America's oldest and most prestigious high school science competition. Over two thousand students begin each year vying for slots; 40 are chosen as finalist. For high school science and math geeks this is a big deal.