The pressures of being young and a student... someone should tell them that this time in their lives is probably as easy as it gets. It's only going to get harder from here. The idea of this doc only supports (or deserves) a 45 min show with add breaks at most, not a whopping 1hr 45 mins. It would have been much more interesting to follow the underachievers, the ones constantly at the bottom of the grade tables, rather than the 'average' students in this. You just know that you'll most likely never hear from any of them again, so who cares. Student range from the obviously privileged to the equally deluded. The kid who got given a scholarship made for a nice (scripted?) moment, but you can't help thinking someone just flushed $18k down the toilet as he had little to no demonstrable talent for acting. Overall not worth 25 mins of your time let alone 101. Nothing of substance here... pass on this.

2 high school drama teachers write and direct a musical for their Cupertino, CA school about the pressures of being a high school student striving to do everything to set themselves up to get into a good college. The musical is called "Ranked" and deals with how schools rank their students' achievements and create a stressful, competitional environment (yes, this is a real musical that was working its way towards off-Broadway when the pandemic hit). The doc also shows the audition and rehearsal steps for two other schools, one in central California and in West Virginia. You see the dichotomy of 3 different schools and musical/drama departments in very different class areas of the country. But then COVID hits and the film switches to being about how the theater arts seniors need to finish up high school and apply to colleges.

I liked this film a lot. It reminded me of the terrific documentary, also from 2021, called Try Harder!, about high school kids competing for the best colleges, a film I absolutely loved. You can't help but wish the best for these kids and want to see where they are in a few years.