
Stealing School is about people who do not want to be where they are. Side characters like Richard (Darrin Baker) tells another, Deborah (Michelle Monteith) that this was not in the job description. ‘This’ is a sham tribunal to kick April Chen (Celine Tsai) out of Dupont College. There are allegations that she has a pattern of cheating her way through her history essays. She is a computer science major who thinks that the liberal arts are beneath her, but she is still trucking through those classes. Anyway, the accuser is Keith Ward (Jonathan Keltz), a teaching assistant who wants the professor he is working for to work with him, for everyone to team up against April. This comedy drama, then, reveals which one of them is right.
Keith’s method of proving that April is a plagiarist is to drag witnesses to this tribunal, one of whom testifies that April’s inconsistent writing is proof of her bad deed. Against her ‘lawyer’s’ advice, she cross examines the witness, proving that students’ writing styles get better or worse per essay. Point for April, I guess, but this comedy also has flashbacks showing that her essay uses the similar wording as easily searchable papers about her topic. So, she either cheated or she has no original ideas because cheaters never do. He would have give her a 50 on that paper and taken a different elective. Keith would have never let her get away with her incompetence the first time around to be angry when she does it again.
Stealing School then paints Keith as a racist and April as his victim, which sure. The things he does are unconscionable, dragging another witness, April’s roommate who has some Japanese heritage. He asks her about Japan’s unconditional surrender which she does not know anything about. After all, not all Japanese people living in the diaspora know their heritage, especially the young ones. However, his racism is not convincing enough of a reason to prove April’s innocence. And sure, this comedy eventually becomes about how her innocence is not the point here. It would help if she were innocent.
But to paraphrase The Dude, just because Keith’s an asshole does not mean he is wrong. It doesn’t help that Keltz’ performance as a villain lacks subtlety. There are other pieces of evidence that Keith presents to the tribunal, like her essay’s file’s metadata. April shows that that’s not a proof of her cheating even though it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that this comedy is trying to hinge itself on how April as a Chinese Canadian.
April is, apparently, more subject to scrutiny than people like Keith and white men like him. Which is only partly true because she is in the tribunal because she cheated. She is one of many Asian women in universities, her removal from the college will not make a dent. She is not the unicorn that the film thinks she is. Just because meritocracy is a lie does not mean that unsympathetic protagonists should not subject themselves through it.
- Release Date: 6/23/2020