kz917-1 Fantastic family friendly movie about perseverance and heart. Based on a true story about immigrant high school kids that form a robotics club in an attempt to get a leg up on their next journey in life. They face many obstacles: family, money, no papers, bad attitudes; but they have heart, will, & determination in spades! Lovely movie worth a rental. Fun for the whole family.

TxMike Watched this on DVD from my public library. This is about a few kids and a teacher in an Albuquerque high school deciding they would build an underwater robot to compete in a national contest. The central character and catalyst is Carlos PenaVega as Oscar Vazquez, a dedicated and polite young man who plans to join the Army and based on his prior ROTC experience hopes to start as an E3. But Carlos has an issue, he needs a birth certificate. He came to the US as an illegal when he was a very small boy and was undocumented. But Carlos learns about the robotic competition and makes the request to new substitute math teacher, George Lopez as out-of-work engineer Dr. Fredi Cameron. (This character is a composite of two teachers that actually guided the kids.) Reluctant, because he didn't envision that it could lead anywhere, he gave in when Carlos found three other students for the team.The community is not a wealthy one and part of the challenge was to raise money for building the remotely controlled robotic sub. They ultimately built it for just under $800 of parts, while many of the teams they would be competing against spent thousands.This is a very nice movie, it has the inevitable feel-good ending, but is gratifying since it is a true story. Of note after all this Carlos voluntarily gave himself up, was deported, but returned legally, served in the military, and was brought to the White House for special recognition.SPOILERS: When the team traveled to California for the competition and saw the line for the college competition was shorter they actually entered that competition because they didn't think it mattered. If they were to lose badly wouldn't it be better to lose to college teams? But their little PVC pipe and spare parts sub worked, and each team member explained it so well in the after competition interviews that counted for 30% of the overall score, they finished 1st, the beat the old champions MIT and other colleges. True story!!

The_Real_Review Based on how this was hyped, it now appears incredibly controversial as to why the Carl Hayden High School won this competition. In the actual underwater challenge they finished 3rd behind MIT which completed the most challenges. So in effect MIT still had the best robot but since the competition also factored in their engineering interview and a review of each group's technical manual they somehow won the entire competition. I am incredibly suspicious that MIT did a worse job in the engineering interview or with their technical manual. Not buying this since at the end of the day the robot that can complete the most challenges should be the winning robot. This challenge is supposed to show who are the better engineers not who are the better salesmen. Sorry but it seems like it was handed to them. Further evidence this is misleading BS. If the Carl Hayden Team was really full of engineering geniuses they would be employed as such. Carl Hayden Team (Luis Aranda, Lorenzo Santillan, Cristian Arcega, Oscar Vazquez) Where are these engineering geniuses now? Luis Aranda (Janitor); Lorenzo Santillan (Line Cook); Cristian Arcega (Worked at Home Depot); Oscar Vazquez (Railroad Foreman)MIT Team (Kurt Stiehl, Lauren Cooney, Jordan Stanway, Thaddeus Stefanov- Wagner) Kurt Stiehl (Product Design Manager at Apple Inc.); Lauren Cooney (Embedded Software Engineer at Teledyne Webb Research); Jordan Stanway (Postdoctoral Fellow at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute); Thaddeus Stefanov-Wagner (Mechanical Engineer at Bluefin Robotics)

A_Different_Drummer Strange how these sort of "feel good" films -- based on actual events -- used to be more commonplace... and now have somehow become an endangered species..? SPARE PARTS is a serious film. By that I mean they used name stars and gave the film a full 2 hour running length. (Lately you can tell more about a film by the length than any other statistic -- the ones that clock in at exactly 1:25 are usually done on the cheap, intended to be sold to TV right away).It might not win any Oscars but it is solid entertainment with no hiccoughs or offbeat moments.For this reviewer, the oddest thing was identifying the "glue." In every story there is a character that the audience comes to identify with, and the actions of this key character often set the tone for how the audience will respond to the whole story.What was interesting here is that the "glue" was Marisa Tomei, who is both the conscience and the heart of the film -- yet she does not have as much camera time as some of the other characters. She does an outstanding job of grounding the story, from beginning to end.Highly recommended.