Frustrated by the hypocrisy they see in their parents, teachers, and the entire school board, an unlikely trio set out to find a common truth and make their voices heard as they revive a defunct school club and take on the world.
While it has the potential to be snarky, dim, and thin, "Speech & Debate" is downright wonderful at times, eschewing the plastic teen routine to create dimensional characters facing interesting personal and educational challenges.
Once a darkly comic romp centered around outing a pedophile teacher, this adaptation has been shorn of its sharpest edges, leaving a largely unfocused, conventional teen dramedy in its place.
All in all, this is a plucky but rather disorganised attempt to explore pressing issues. For a teen-focused film, it's refreshingly lacking in cynicism, but its fate will depend on whether or not its audience shares this quality.
Although the story, which feels a tad past its expiration date, never digs too deeply into its central issues (hypocrisy, loneliness, censorship, finding one's voice), Dan Harris' peppy direction and nimble turns by the film's young leads prevail.
The film's stage origins, and a cameo appearance by Lin-Manuel Miranda, may be of interest to theater buffs, but everyone else will be left wondering what all the fuss was about.
