Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal’ on Netflix, a Documentary Indictment of American Higher Ed

Netflix documentary-drama Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal wants us to know who Rick Singer is. He’s the guy behind the blockbuster scam where Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin, and many heavily moneyed CEOs bribed universities to get their kids in the door — and did some time in the slammer for it. It’s a juicy story, and the film leans heavily on reenactments in which Matthew Modine plays Singer, an interesting choice for many reasons. However, the more notable, but less recognizable name behind the movie is Chris Smith, the documentary producer/director behind Netflix hits Tiger King and Fyre (and whose career launched auspiciously with 1999’s American Movie). If anyone can go beyond the headlines of this real-life saga and present it to us in an entertaining fashion, it’s probably him.

OPERATION VARSITY BLUES: THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS SCANDAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Everyone knows the “front door” way to get into a university — study hard, get good grades, participate in extracurriculars, ace the standardized tests. You probably also know the “back door” method — have rich parents who can grease the wheels by writing a seven-or-eight-figure check to the school as a “donation.” Rick Singer wasn’t really interested in the former, and the latter, he was quick to inform families with yachts and Benzes, offers no guarantee. He could guarantee admission, and it would cost even less. It was the “side door” method, where he’d hand a modest bribe to a sports coach or athletic director and get the kid in the school as an athlete in a smaller sport. The kid didn’t have to be at all athletic; Singer would doctor photos to make them look like coxswains and sailors. And it’d ONLY cost the family a few hundred thousand bucks.

We see lots of scenes in which Modine, playing Singer, explains all this to parents who are very, very, very, very (very!) concerned about their kid getting into a “prestige” school. Amusingly, the documentary points out how the etymology of the word “prestige” is not “high-class,” as is the modern connotation, but actually is like the Christopher Nolan movie of said title, meaning “illusion” or “conjuring tricks.” Zap! Anyway, Singer is a former basketball coach who looks like a former basketball coach — bad haircut, always wearing golf shirts and workout pants. He had a Bobby Knight-like temper on the court, so he took a different tack and used his knowledge of college recruitment to become an independent college counselor, which is someone people with big bank accounts pay hundreds of dollars an hour to help their teenager study for the SATs or ACTs and whip their college applications into shape. Somewhere along the way, he parlayed that into his now-famous scheme, with the bribery and the charging of parents $75,000 for a phony proctor to take the tests for the kids and boost their scores, thanks to a little fudging of this or that procedure or application.

From 2011 to 2019, when the FBI caught up with Singer, he had raked in $25 million. Between scenes of Modine in New Balances talking on the phone with parents — conversations based on recordings from FBI wiretaps — Smith interviews a variety of journalists, lawyers and recruitment experts, alongside a woman Singer met on a dating site and hired to work for one of his side businesses and a mostly sympathetic man named John Vandemoer, the now-former Stanford sailing coach who got caught up in Singer’s conspiracy, and paid for it. If you’ve read any of the news reports about this infuriating story, you know that all kinds of rich people ended up in jail, but Singer didn’t. Not yet at least — he’s still facing charges, but he worked as an FBI informant and threw all his “clients” under the bus. Nice guy.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: As far as documentaries with lots of reenactments go, Operation Varsity Blues is solid, but it’s no Man on Wire.

Performance Worth Watching: You’re going to key in on Vandemoer, because he’s pretty much the only firsthand participant in Singer’s scummy little ploy. It’s worth noting that he was the only person not to line his own pockets with bribe cash — he just wanted to keep his sailing program financially afloat.

Memorable Dialogue: A fascinating observation by test prep expert Akil Bello: “When you look at it in light of the scandal, you have predominantly rich families who (already) had every advantage… and yet they still cheated.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Operation Varsity Blues is slick and entertaining, giving us the gist of the story without getting too far into the weeds. Smith’s decision to use the FBI’s tapes pretty much verbatim (some were condensed for clarity, per an opening title card) as dialogue for Modine is a nifty way to get Singer’s voice in the film without falling into the audio-over-still-imagery trappings of so many documentaries. As far as reenactments go, many are far cheesier, and typically don’t feature someone with Modine’s acumen. This streamlined presentation of the story works nicely.

Fact-wise, we get the ins and outs and a few of the what-have-yous, although we may end up wanting more. Smith covers the basics, touches on the scandal’s broader implications and wraps on a note of frustration with regards to the justice system and the commodified, possibly corrupt state of higher-ed institutions. One talking head says the whole fracas didn’t really change anything about the way universities function; its impact was more about schadenfreude — average folk laughing at rich people getting busted for trying to buy a spot at an acclaimed school. Oh, and at the expense of someone who deserved it, so there’s your stirred-up rage for today.

But the story as Smith presents it feels incomplete. The lid got ripped off the scandal only two years ago, which likely severely limited the participation of anyone directly involved with Singer’s scheme. We get a few shades of who Singer is as a person — matter-of-fact guy, workaholic, got up at 4 a.m. every day to exercise — but he feels incomplete as a character. He seems to have sociopathic tendencies; maybe he’s unknowable. There are two greater stories here that maybe deserve their own movies: One, how the scandal further erodes the standing of American universities, which are plagued with sports and ethics scandals, and frequently burden students with crippling debt. Attending college isn’t quite the point of pride it used to be. (The film points out how highly touted school rankings are based not on academics but subjective “prestige” factors; it’s naught but a glancing blow.)

And two, the impact of the scandal on the families involved. Parents bent over backwards to not let their kids know about their shady dealings. But now that they’re busted, how did it erode those relationships? The sense of trust? The kids’ knowing that those test scores weren’t their own? The idea of parents prioritizing their own status over their kids’ well-being? In a world where a McDonald’s sweepstakes scam gets six episodes, Operation Varsity Blues feels like it needs two or three.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Operation Varsity Blues is by no means definitive, but it’s a solidly journalistic doc that stirs up some serious issues, and is good enough to warrant a watch.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal on Netflix