-By Eric Monder

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Whiz Kids, the “science fair” answer to Spellbound (the doc about spelling bees) and Slamnation (about poetry slams), is as straightforward and wholesome as the kids it profiles, but the fresh, bright youngsters will win you over anyway. It is hard to imagine a movie audience flocking to a film that looks made for public television, but you never know.

Whiz Kids offers an upbeat view of a handful of high-school seniors who, with their unique ideas and presentations, enter the prestigious, national Science Talent Search. Tom Shepard and co-director Tina DeFeliciantonio more than competently follow the students’ lives at home, in school, at the contest site (in Washington, D.C.), and beyond. The three main subjects are Kelydra Weicker, a West Virginian concerned with environmental science; Ana Cisneros, an Ecuadorian-American from New York focused on botany; and Harmain Khan, a Pakistan-born New Yorker interested in paleontology.

We learn about each student through interviews—with family members, friends, teachers, and the “whiz kids” themselves. Kelydra inspires her home town by trying to figure out how to remove a contaminant from the local river; Ana feels the pressure of representing the Hispanic community through her study of farming without pesticides; and Harmain is determined to overcome his family’s poverty through his painstaking investigation of crocodile fossils. Though none of them ends up winning the grand prizes at the Science Talent Search, the students learn about themselves and receive other compensations for their efforts.

There is little wrong with this “Nova”-like version of a reality-TV show. The three students are highly intelligent and also personally appealing. One grows to care about their ambitions and root for their success. Shepard, DeFeliciantonio and writer-editor Jane C. Wagner crosscut the stories in a skillful way without too many lags in the action, although we lose Ana for a period during the Washington scenes, which are the most dramatic and highlighted by a Barack Obama cameo.

The only major complaint here is that the documentary sidesteps some key questions. For example, one wonders how the well-meaning students will confront the demands of Big Science and ruthless industry. At least Kelydra is on her way to challenge one major corporation, but the showdown never occurs. How can any of them run away from compromise, actually? The Science Talent Search is sponsored by Intel and attended by bought-and-sold-out politicians. Moreover, we get little sense of the lives of scientists (or what is in store for the “whiz kids”) in the real world, past academia.

The filmmakers are more concerned with the present. Yet in Capraesque fashion, every letdown is followed by good news—and some of these moments are too conveniently captured on camera. (How did the filmmakers know to be around when Kelydra is told on the phone she has been chosen as a finalist, or Harmain discovers via computer he is accepted into Yale?) And why label these teenagers as scientists (with professional-sounding titles) when the name of your film is the much-too-precious Whiz Kids?

But you can’t help cheering for these students—whatever their futures (and ours) may really hold.