Fresh and Exciting

Fantastic!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Blistering performances.

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.

I really liked the movie's morals , this movie tells you that everyone has his mission in this life , nobody is useless here , his value might not be noteworthy as for solo work , but it will be remarkable in a team work , and that's what the movie incites us to do or rather shows us ,and how strong and full of surprises the team work is . The movie highlighted on another major point , which is the immigrants , showed us how gainful they might be , and that they are not all alike , a lot of them are genial who love The US more than its natives , and some won't hesitate to help for no return , and how some of them are suffering because the ICE pursues them but they don't want to go back to Mexico because they like The USA , they want to be part of the community , so as i grasp ,the message was to deport the criminals and support the smart and diligent or even the people who want to serve America in any way , the movie attained a huge earnings and i believe it deserved it , i gave this movie 8 because of some expected scenes or moments , but overall the movie worth the 115 minutes .

"No matter what happens up there, I don't want the word "Hooters" coming out of your mouth."Is your mood not that positive and you've lost your faith in things, then I advise you to go and watch this movie, because this is a feel-good movie of the first rank. After watching this "everything-is-possible" movie, maybe you're going to realize that things aren't that bad and that for every hopeless situation there's a solution. You should only believe in it and grab every opportunity with both hands. Nothing seems impossible as long as you don't waste your perseverance. Voila, thus the positive tone of this film has been set. It's a film that contains all the ingredients needed to make some kind of Disney-like story in which a group of students without a future (and some without identity) and looked at as outcasts and hopeless underdogs, have to compete against individuals who have everything and whose future looks promising. Without much effort you can mention countless movies dealing with the struggle of the weak against the strong (like "The Karate Kid", "October Sky", "The Blind Side", "Forrest Gump", "Major League" ...)"Spare Parts" also belongs in this list. Young people of Mexican descent, most undocumented, are attending a high school in Phoenix and being assisted by passionate teachers and an enthusiastic director (Jamie Lee Curtis), despite their sometimes desperate situation, so they can obtain a proper education. Fredi Cameron (George Lopez), an engineer, is apparently desperately looking for a job and therefore applies for the vacant position as temporary science teacher. At the insistence of Oscar (Carlos Pena Vega), who due to the lack of a birth certificate can't enlist in the US Army, Fredi accompanies a group of students to compete in a national robot competition against renowned universities such as MIT and Virginia Tech.The sad thing about such "underdog-contending-with-a-superior-group" films, is that the outcome is already known before the film started. An additional issue covered in this film is the problem of people living illegally in the USA. The constant threat of being arrested and deported, is regularly brought up. Furthermore, the known clichés aren't eschewed either. The sympathetic teacher who acts as a father figure and apparently suffers of a trauma out of the past (although this is not really explained in detail in this film). The romance that blossoms between him and fellow teacher Marisa Tomei (Gwen Kolinsky), a single mother who also happens to know a bit of programming. The animosity between the young people that slowly turns into an intense friendship. And of course the ultimate denouement which is so obvious. Although I had to restrain myself from spontaneously bursting into an applause. But that's usually the objective of such a movie.Certainly you can't say this film is truly original, but the performances are admirable. The diversity of the teenagers and their array of talents ensure both funny and heartfelt moments. Maybe at times a little bit too corny. Oscar is the driven leader. Christian (David Del Rio) is the intellectual who has a proper scientific solution for every problem posed. Lorenzo (Jose Julian) is the electronics specialist and Hector (JR Villarreal) is not the brightest of them all but surely is useful when it comes to lifting things. Both the interaction between these characters and the way they build a prototype with cheap material and spare parts (even tampons solve a problem) creates humorous moments. And I thought Jamie Lee Curtis was a surprise as a supporting act. A director who uses non-conventional methods for running a school. Brilliant at times."Spare Parts" certainly isn't a blockbuster and will appear in the VOD circuit. It's no more than a TV movie based on a true story, as so many movies have already been broadcasted. The most captivating moment was when Jamie Lee Curtis announced the results via the intercom, and you see that nobody is really listening. A brief moment so meaningful : a school community where certain individuals do well-intentioned efforts and you realize that this school community show no interest in it at all. Fortunately, it's not always like that ! More reviews here : http://bit.ly/1KIdQMT

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)