Reviews

This is a very compelling real story of a Hawaiian college football player who got lured into an online relationship, in which he was then scammed into thinking that he has a beautiful long-distance girlfriend. The film is very well done; Netflix managed to get all the important "actors" to participate. If you like sports, or if you do a lot of online dating, you should watch this film.

I'd like to mention a few important things:

1. Participants in Netflix films get paid. With the going rates in Hollywood, Manti Te'o and Naya Tuiasosopo each earned several hundreds of thousands of dollars. My best estimate is ~$500K each. Others got paid too, but less.

2. The above payment is the most likely reason why Naya Tuiasosopo even participated. I think she got greedy, and decided that the public embarassment is worth the money.

3. The film doesn't directly say this, but it is important. NFL draft *first pick* contracts are $10M - $40M, whereas those for the *second pick* are $2M-$3M. So, the failure to be a first pick cost Manti Te'o at least $8M, and likely more. This is a major financial loss, after years of hard work. And we can pretty much blame Naya Tuiasosopo.

4. Naya Tuiasosopo was catfishing multiple people at the same time. It was not just Manti Te'o. Always the same fake story, same fake Facebook profile. You can Google this and you'll find that there are other victims. The film is silent on this, but it is important to get the full picture.

Manti Te'o, if you are reading this, I was very moved by this film and wish you all the best. You have suffered a huge injustice. You said that you are at peace with all of this, but I think you may still have a legal case against Tuiasosopo (lost NFL money, depression while in NFL, etc.); perhaps you may be able to recover some of the money that she earned in this Netflix deal.

I understand why Manti Te'o fell for this scam. He moved to a city in the Mid-West (South Bend; University of Notre Dame), at a very young age, far away from his culture. There are not many Hawaian/Polynesian girls in South Bend, Indiana. Of course he wanted to have a beautiful successful (Stanford!) girlfriend from his culture -- all football players do. Between the hard work at football trainings (limited time for dating), and being so far away from Hawaian/Polynesian girls, meeting a Hawaian/Polynesian girl online became a very real possibility. Naya Tuiasosopo has preyed on this vulnerability.

What Naya Tuiasosopo has done is of course completely abusive. Although the film doesn't really try to paint Tuiasosopo negatively, the sheer volume of facts presented clearly shows the abuse.

Netflix painted Tuiasosopo way too positively. Being transgendered doesn't give someone the right to lie and manipulate another person into a relationship. Online relationships involve real emotions, and people can get seriously hurt and negatively affected. Pretending that the girlfriend died, acting out hospital scenes over the phone, coming back from the dead?? This is terrible (and IMO, it should be a crime).

I think the small news organization (Deadspin) that broke the story is despicable. They ran a sensational story without properly giving Manti Te'o a chance to tell his side of the story; and in doing so, they greatly damaged his career. Their motivation: "We wanted to embarass the big media outlets". Incredibly self-centered and selfish. At the minimum, you should have tried harder to reach Manti Te'o before you went public with the story!

It is terrible how all media jumped to conclusion that Manti Te'o was somehow in on this hoax. The media all owe him an apology. This was a young man that fell for an online hoax, and paid a very high price for it. Media, can you run some positive articles on Manti Te'o and this story, to at least somewhat compensate?

I am a teacher and I work in a classroom every day. I find the portrayal of class dynamics in this movie very unrealistic. It may make for a good movie and provokes the thought, but it is exaggerated. Maybe it is designed in such a way for a shock effect. However, real people, students or teachers, don't behave this way, in any neighborhood.

On one hand, we have the students, who are bursting with vile, anger, frustration, and who are downright mean to the teacher, basically all the time. I don't think a class exists on this planet where the students behave in such an extreme way all the time, in every class.

Of course, everything that we see in this movie has happened, and likely happens many times, in many countries, in many neighborhoods. However, the amount of it that happens in this movie, in one hour, in every lecture, is not realistic. In a real setting, the teacher would simply not be able to take it. Nobody can take such constant interruptions, the constant lewd comments, the downright hostility to the teacher, even physical threats, and stay composed and serious and positive like the teacher in this movie.

At some point, the teacher calls the students "skunks". This is after the two students that sat on the committee (and acted inappropriately the entire time, by interrupting, making noise, etc) totally told the rest of the class about these presumably private discussions among the faculty members. Yet, the students are never reprimanded for this. How is this not in itself seen as a serious infraction, when clearly faculty discussions are confidential when evaluating students, comparing them to each other, and discussing whether someone should be expelled?

Even worse, the two students lied to Suleyman, claiming that the teacher tried to diss him at the meeting, when in reality, he tried saving him (and other teachers tried to expel him). It makes no sense.. why are the two students so mean, so insensitive, that they even lie to their own classmate about what the teacher actually said or tried to do.

Teacher's reaction makes no sense either. Every real teacher would point out to the private nature of the conversations at the meeting. Every real teacher, when sensed that Suleyman is being misled by his peers, would point out that he tried saving him. But not this teacher. Even more strangely, the one word "skunk" that this teacher uttered (and even that one in a mild context), is taken by the students as some crown proof of teacher abuse -- after they themselves have been 100x more abusive. And it even flies with the other teachers, with the headmaster, and they get our teacher into trouble. Sorry.. real schools, real people don't work and behave in this way.

On the other hand, we have the nearly perfect assembly of teachers, who are somehow able to take all of this constant abuse and still act perfectly reasonable. They are having their perfect conversations, like a group of perfect academics, about what to do with the students. I don't think real people, real teachers behave like that. In such a hostile environment, real teachers either quit, or become jaded, or they stop caring. But they don't take such enormous amounts of abuse in daily, and still continue with such perfect dialogs, analysis, and intentions.

So for me, both the students and teachers in this movie are mis-represented. The students are too evil, and the teachers are too perfect.

I am a university professor at a large, well-known, university in Los Angeles. I watched this movie because I got my degree at Carnegie Mellon, and because it portrays a professor.. I found this movie unrealistic, portraying intellectuals in a rather unflattering way. Sure, my alma mater (CMU) got some advertisement. And the movie is entertaining and several scenes made me laugh.. but that does not change the fact that the premise of this movie is misleading.

This professor is grumpy and arrogant as heck. He walks around campus like he has a constant hangover. What is this guy's problem? Why the bitterness? The "students just want As" and "my wife died 15 years ago" are really lame explanations. Maybe the bottom 5% of all professors behave like that, but by no means this is the typical case. Actually, at my university, I do not know a single colleague who would fit the bill.

Professors as shown in this movie are very rare. Climbing 20-foot fences to get to their impounded car? Carelessly parking in two parking spots at a time? Rigging the clock to avoid student office hours? Self-nominating for a department chair position while serving on the committee to fill this same position? In real life, there is something called conflict of interest, and very much enforced by the university handbook mind you.. (and the movie's premise of "democratic process" somehow overruling it is just ridiculous). Not remembering a single students name? Such arrogant people, professors or not, are never popular, and they should not be. Students rarely (if ever) have crushes on them. In real life, it really would be over after 1 date with that doctor..

The movie pretends to give a window into a professor's social life at home, as if it was in some way representative of professors, or smart people at large. It reinforces the stereotype of a maladjusted smart person. Even his daughter is maladjusted. The only socially-sane person is the unemployed renegade brother. So again we have the stereotype of: smart people=socially awkward, average people=socially adjusted. We have already been fed these stereotypes in many films. It is time for a film that shows the true, realistic, life of smart people. Let's see some realistic challenges facing smart people today. Any director out there willing to study this topic and make a realistic portrayal?