I’ve had a soft spot for Mexican cinema star, director and producer Eugenio Derbez ever since his North American breakthrough, playing a “Dad” out of his depth with a tiny kid in “Intructions Not Included.”

His Hollywood-produced projects have been mostly mediocre in concept (lame remakes of “Overboard” and “The Valet”) or execution.

But his sentimental connection with kids paid off in the excellent awards contender “CODA,” and it’s back on display in “Radical,” a well-intentioned, touching, sometimes funny and somewhat incomplete “true story” of a teacher who dared to care about getting his students to think their way out of their working poor (mostly) lives in troubled, gang-infested and corrupt Matamoros, Mexico.

How bad are things within the inept, corrupt and generally immovable Mexican educational system and those who would oversee it and expose it? “Radical” is based on a North American journalist’s reporting and “Wired” magazine article that revealed this teacher’s part in a revolutionary rethinking of the way we teach children.

Many of the kids in the rundown José Urbina López Primary School in Matamoros, a city on the coastal edge of the long US/Mexican border, struggle to get to school every day in clean clothes, homework done and ready to learn.

Some are better off than others, but the poorest have parents who work split shifts, relying on their children to organize their lives and raise themselves. Another lives on the edge of a dump, her metal-recycler dad barely able to feed and house them as they pick over that dump for junk or broken and discarded treasures.

Tween boys are hitting the age when the local drug gangs are recruiting them to be boy soldiers in their war with rivals and cops in a town where armed police checkpoints and explosions of violence are a daily fact of life.

Those kids don’t know what hit them when they walk into the sixth grade classroom of new teacher, Sergio Juárez Correa (Derbez). He’s upended all the desks and left them in piles. He’s wild-eyed with panic.

“We’re SHIPWRECKED,” he bellows (in Spanish with English subtitles). Come on, kids. Help save us. WORK the problem. How many can fit in a lifeboat? WHY will that lifeboat sink if we overload it?

Thus begins this class of twelve-year-olds’ “real” education, driven by a sad-eyed but determined middle school teacher who’s watched Youtube videos of an educator who reminds us that it’s not just about teaching, it’s about getting out of the way of kids’ ability and eagerness to learn. Sergio’s taken a demotion to a primary school just to try this theory out.

Naturally, this runs Señor Juárez afoul of The Director of the School (Daniel Haddad). There are colleagues more than willing to tell him NOT to rock this imaginary lifeboat that drives the lessons in those first days. Mexican schools, like North American ones, lean on testing to “prove” they’re succeeding.

Aren’t you prepping your kids with the fact-memorizing needed to raise their (teacher bonuses dependent) ENLACE test scores?

“Radical” dares to show us teachers just collecting a check and enforcing “discipline,” a school librarian who stopped caring or even making an effort years ago and a nakedly corrupt administration that won’t replace the long-ago stolen workstations of the computer lab.

This maestro wants his kids to learn to think, to be able to figure out what questions to ask, how to ask them and know where to go and find answers. No computers and a dead weight librarian at school and little support from their parents are just some of the obstacles these students and their teacher will be fighting over the 2011-2012 school year.

There’s no getting around the fact that writer-director Christopher Zalla (“Blood of My Blood”) has made a very conventional Teacher Who Made a Difference drama. “Radical” is a little bit “Dangerous Minds,” a touch of “Freedom Writers” and a large portion of “Stand and Deliver” in the story it tells, the “types” of educators and students shown here and the obstacles they must overcome.

Jennifer Trejo plays the quiet, brilliant child of the garbage picker with dreams of becoming an astronaut or rocket scientist. Daniolo Guardiola is Nico, the tween who crushes on smart Paloma and makes an effort to go to school just to be near her. But he’s starting to have gang responsibilities which his older brother (Victor Estrada) can only help him with, not save him from. And Mía Fernanda Solís plays the short, quizzical kid who frets over matters ethical and — broadly put — metaphysical. She could be a “philosopher” some day, Señor Juárez encourages her to believe.

One great attribute of the film is how the story doesn’t hide much of the ugliness or the helpness despair of minds being wasted and kids who realize they can’t reach for their dreams.

Sergio can ask, “Isn’t everything impossible until it’s done?” But that doesn’t change generations of bad educational practices and grinding existences that come from being born into poor circumstances.

But “Radical” feels incomplete. The film doesn’t really “sell” these teaching methods. It tells us they work and expects the viewer to buy in. We can guess our teacher’s “sad secret” without it being talked about, even if we can’t figure out why the sweets-craving director of the school endorses this “radical” teaching method with too little struggle.

Good performances by Derbez and the kids recommend “Radical.” But wading through the cliches of the genre and stumbling towards that inevitable feel-good finale — blowing any “highs” the picture might celebrate, make it hard to recommend.

They’ve had two hours in this slow, formulaic and manipulative film to make their point. But as much slack as we cut them for their sweet, well-intentioned “hearts are in the right place” effort, they don’t quite manage it.

Rating: PG-13 for some strong violent content, thematic material and strong language

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Daniel Haddad, Jennifer Trejo,
Mia Fernanda Solis, Victor Estrada, Enoc Leaño and Danilo Guardiola

Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Zalla, based on a magazine article by Joshua Davis. A Pantelion release.

Running time: 2:05