Not One Less (1999)

Not One Less (1999)

A 13 year old graduated girl named Wei Minzhu becomes a teacher in a rundown school. She teaches the kids on a limited budget, as well as lives with them. One of the 26 students named Zhung Huike is the “class clown”/ trouble making punk (aren’t they the same thing?) made some conflict of making mess with the other students in the cost of the chalks they have little of, and constantly tries to run away from school. One day, Wei loses one of her students to sports school to Mr. Zhang’s group. Zhung (not to be confused with Zhang from the previous sentence) successfully ran away from school to his “sick mother” in the city. Wei needed to get Zhung back, but needed money for transportation to get him back. Will Wei get the Zhung back to sustain her class, job, and sanity?

The moral is to keep your job with responsibility, no matter the setting and conflict you’ll get. If you don’t, then you’ll lose it all.

I feel sorry for Wei for her teaching in a terribly crooked school at a young age. She’s actually trying her best to teach and save her students with emotions, and physically does her job than spoke or waves her finger.

I don’t sense compassion onto Zhung, he’s just an annoying, snot nose, little brat with little to no redeemable factor what so ever. He could have been redeemable when we see him with “sick mom”, but we never did as is the reason why I said “sick mom” very loosely. You can argue that she’s dead as Zhung is mentally destroyed, but usually they have at least some sorrow or mentioning of dead mom or less likely having vengeance.

The rest of the kids are very forgettable. The problem with kid characters as side characters is they’re mostly range from bland to annoying. They’re rarely good unique kid characters in films aside from animated films that starred kids, maybe ET, Monster Squad, The Goonies,

There’s rarely a film that focus on the teacher than the students such as an episode of Simpsons, King and I (the live action version, not the crappy Richard Rich animated version), (next example I might kick myself with an ice skate) a Goofy Cartoon- Teachers Are People, School of Rock (the movie, not the many crappy Nickelodeon live action shows), and Bad Teacher. However, we’ve never see the teacher be as young as 13, since they’re mostly 25 or older.

Usually my closer friend in high school was the teacher or teacher’s assistant than the students, because majority of them are obnoxious. So I befriend them since they’re most sane to some extent. This film I’m okay with, the twerp I’m not.