The Revisionaries is a preach to the choir documentary. If you consider yourself a moderate and are frustrated that Texas sets the tone for how children are educated in the US because of heavy influence from conservative Christian government officials, The Revisionaries will substantiate your fears. If you are a conservative Christian and feel like Christian tenets are trying to be eliminated from schools, then unintentionally The Revisionaries will confirm your suspicions.
The Revisionaries does an excellent job documenting the peculiarities and maneuvering of the Texas Board of Education as they make both grand and subtle gestures to edit school textbooks line by line, but instead of explicitly devoting time to explaining why the Texas Board of Education is wrong or comparing and contrasting how textbooks should be made versus how they were made in this situation, The Revisionaries assumes that the audience will get it. The Revisionaries spends a lot of time emphasizing one conservative board member’s profession as a dentist to imply the absurdity of him dictating what history and science textbooks should say, but I think that was not sufficient since clearly many people DON’T think that an academic background in a topic SHOULD be a basis for critiquing a textbook. Many people may think that his lack of experience is an asset.
In the end, The Revisionaries replicates the dynamic that occurs in real life. The Revisionaries strains to create a camaraderie that does not exist between the opposing sides and only veils a barely concealed contempt that each side has for the other. They are talking at each other, and I don’t think that there is a way to breach the divide since they both are convinced that they are right, but both sides can’t be.