Netflix's College Admission Scandal Doc 'Operation Varsity Blues' Doesn't Probe That Deep

The high-profile celebrities caught up in the scandal, like Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, take a back seat to the man who orchestrated the whole thing.

operation varsity blues
Netflix
Netflix

It's now basically tradition: A scandal breaks in the news, it gets a Netflix documentary. Such is the case with Chris Smith's Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, which takes on the 2019 case of the wealthy parents—including, most famously, Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman—who bought slots for their kids at elite universities. But if you're looking for new information about Aunt Becky or Olivia Jade, Operation Varsity Blues does not provide that tabloid fodder. Instead, it's designed as an attempt to probe the psyche of Rick Singer, the mystery of a man who engineered this entire enterprise, pocketing $25 million, through a combination of interviews with experts and associates as well as reenactments starring Matthew Modine. 

Operation Varsity Blues is Smith's followup to Netflix's Fyre, a breakdown of the disastrous Fyre Festival that included plenty of shocking behind-the-scenes revelations, and while it's unlikely to be as memed as that project, it's a somewhat intriguing mashup of styles. Will it tell you anything you don't already know from reading coverage of the event? Probably not, but perhaps the only way to capture just how strange Singer is as a character is to have Modine traipsing around in gym shorts to a score co-written by Atticus Ross that echoes his work on The Social Network.

The dialogue between Modine's Singer and the other actors playing the parents using his services is taken entirely from FBI transcripts, altered only for time and clarity. Meanwhile, Smith interviews Singer's acquaintances, journalists, and test prep experts to get a deeper look at a man who infiltrated his way into rich people's lives to exploit their insecurities. But Singer is a hard guy to get a read on. He's a former basketball coach with a reputation for dramatic outbursts, who turned to college prep when he was fired after a bad year for Sacramento State. Those who knew him from the beginning were suspicious of his motives to the extent that they felt vindicated when he was finally implicated. Modine plays Singer with an underlying intensity that is occasionally masked by his preference for wearing workout clothes at all times. 

Smith highlights conversations Singer—who still has yet to be sentenced after pleading guilty to money laundering, racketeering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice charges in 2019—had with the parents who became his co-conspirators that reveal just how he got away with this. He explains his "side door" method of getting into schools through bribes funneled to sports programs masked as donations to his foundation. He outlines his strategy for falsifying standardized test results by getting them extra time by claiming a learning disability, at which point they would be allowed to take the test monitored by his proctor who would take over after they left, inching their answers to a better score. 

If Smith finds any pathos to be had it's not for Singer, but for some of the kids involved, who are unseen as their parents try to discuss ways of changing their future without their knowledge. But Operation Varsity Blues also serves as an indictment of the college admissions process in general, especially in the age of social media where acceptances or rejections are immediately celebrated or bemoaned in very public fashion. 

And then there are the colleges themselves. Most of Singer's campus connections are similarly played by actors, and their motivations are investigated less thoroughly than his. The one that stands out is Stanford sailing coach John Vandemoer, who actually sits for an interview. Vandemoer doesn't maintain his innocence, but he does add another wrinkle to the narrative, alleging that the first time Singer donated to his program he was not involved in an admissions scam. He further admits that when he did eventually start participating, it was out of desperation to raise money for his team, which didn't have the resources higher profile sports had. Whether or not Vandemoer deserves your sympathy is left open, but his interview does make it plain that everyone involved was simply in it for themselves. 

Operation Varsity Blues is never quite as juicy nor as angry as one might hope from a film about this subject matter. And perhaps that's the trouble with focusing on Singer. He's never more than an opportunist who saw desperation among other opportunists and decided to capitalize on that. Knowing more about him doesn't explain his motives or make him a more compelling figure; he's just as much of a question mark as before.

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Esther Zuckerman is a senior entertainment writer at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter @ezwrites.