Gee, Jim, what did you expect? I mean, the title is “Science Fair,” is it not? So I watch this film and say to myself, “hmmmmm … it’s about science, and the science is not wonderful, it’s just … fair.” What did I expect? It’s right there in the title. Perhaps if they had included some punctuation… call it “Science: Fair.” That would be a better description, right?
I kid. I kid because I am oh, so jealous. Like the documentaries Wordplay and Spellbound before it, Science Fair is a celebration of the brainy. This country used to respect the brainy bunch before the Right decided that fact and intellect were objects for derision. Now, one wonders how these kids keep from being stuffed in lockers on a daily basis … by adults in MAGA hats. Science Fair is a cross-section smattering of the contestants who have qualified for the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), a worldwide contest for young science geeks.
I dare any living human not to smile upon watching the opening in which the 2012 ISEF Oscar moment is announced and the dorkiest spazz you’ve ever seen (Jack Andraka) absolutely loses it. And, you know, I’m totally with him. His elation is so pure, he is literally laughing and crying at the same time; he’s an absolute maelstrom of emotional energy – it’s too bad science couldn’t harness some of that; it could light up Los Angeles for a year.
The kids are awkward, but that’s ok. Louisville teen Anjali Chadha is practically the next Doogie Howser already. She knows she’s smart; you would too if you kept skipping grades. But she actually appreciates losing, “it keeps me grounded.” Wow. I wish I were that mature about anything. Robbie’s long hair and Magnum, P.I. fashion sense are not all the rage in West Virginia; he doesn’t care, but his parents do. He’s hoping that his science genius will overcome his incredibly weak grades. As a slacker student only interested in the science stuff, Robbie is a bit of an anomaly even among his peers.
Speaking of anomalies, Kashfia is practically a ghost at her high school in Brookings, South Dakota. If you’re profiling the average American ISEF entrant, Kashfia 
checks all the boxes – Asian-American, parents are recent immigrants, a lone person of color among a very white group of peers. Kashfia is Muslim to boot. That’s the part that gets me the most; in the conservative backwaters of Brookings, South Dakota, the parents of her classmates are almost certainly the ones who scream longest and loudest about building walls, digging pipelines, and banning Muslims, yet Kashfia is the one destined to put Brookings on the map. The science teachers in the school won’t touch her. ISEF kids have to have an adult sponsor and that responsibility has become property of the football coach whose team went 0-9 the previous fall.
Now, I wasn’t actually kidding about the Science being Fair in Science Fair; for all its excellence in human portrayals, I think it’s actually quite iffy on genuine science. Many times, I couldn’t tell you what science innovation a kid ws even working on, let alone how they were revolutionizing the field. One subtlety of this documentary is the projects attempted by kids for poor areas vs. those attempted
by kids from relatively wealthy backgrounds. Remember the Zika scare associated with the Rio Olympics? Myllena is a girl from a collection of dirt huts in Brazil aiming to end Zika. Meanwhile, Ivo is a German kid who owns a field; he’s taken a failed 1920s airplane design and showed how it can work. Oh, who cares about curing the Zika Virus, that kid built a model airplane!
Honestly, I was a little let down by the apolitical tone of the piece. No, I didn’t expect Michael Moore here, but you do realize how many toes you’re actually stepping on, right? The political Right in this country – the people in power now- do not believe in science, do not believe in international cooperation, do not believe in universal education, and mostly equate intellectualism with elitism. Brookings High School is prouder of its 0-9 football team than having sent an entrant to ISEF. Most of the students there don’t even know who Kashfia is. What’s wrong with this picture? This would have been an ideal forum for the science-loving filmmakers here to tell their head-in-the-sand political leaders exactly where to stick it; hey, wait! Did that kid build a model airplane?
A documentary about future field leader
Whose tech skillz can stymie a reader
And me, unimpressed
In this venue, I’m blessed
Hey science, I once built a bird feeder
Rated PG, 90 Minutes
Director: Cristina Costantini, Darren Foster
Writer: Cristina Costantini, Darren Foster, Jeff Plunkett
Genre: Ah, to be young, brainy, and really awkward
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Science kids
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Trumpists
