Bad Education, with its fictional young reporter, is one of the great journalism movies

Slate

What's great about Geraldine Viswanathan's portrayal of fictional high school newspaper reporter Rachel Bhargava is that's she's inspirational even though her character is “part composite, part invention, as screenwriter Mike Makowsky put it. "We’ve seen slick portrayals of journalists before, but one thing that’s great about Viswanathan’s performance is the way she plays Rachel as a kind of slightly awkward every-teenager," says Heather Schwedel. "She’s not a preternaturally skilled professional in the body of a 16-year-old but a kid who stumbles onto a good story and is willing to work hard to figure it out. Wearing an early-2000s wardrobe of mall-obtained overalls, hoodies, striped tops, and a green Jansport, she’s not aspirationally dressed like a character on on Gossip Girl. Instead, she’s the high school equivalent of Rachel McAdams’ dowdified, khakis-wearing reporter in Spotlight. I for one would love if this dorky Long Island teenager became a cult figure."