The Disney film about a young Ugandan girl (newcomer Madina Nalwanga as Phiona Mutesi) living in extreme poverty who gradually becomes a chess master. David Oyelowo plays her ultra-supportive coach and a (heavier than usual) Lupita N’yongo plays her more ambiguous mother.
What Works: Director Mira Nair treats it more like an intimate play than a rousing sports drama, and it’s the rare rags-to-riches tale that seems just as interested in the person’s life before they made it. Every main character gets real, soulful moments and even N’yongo’s less-than-enthusiastic mom isn’t a mere villain or even really an antagonist. She’s just a mother who doesn’t really understand the thing her daughter is becoming great at and is afraid she won’t be able to offer her all that her new world is revealing.
For her part, Nair is fascinated with the reddish-colored village—and how neatly that contrasts with the black-and-white, hospital-esque sterility of most chess tournaments—and a sequence set during a monsoon is gorgeous.
What Doesn’t: The movie’s central flaw is that it really has no interest whatsoever in the game of chess. Now I’m embarassed to admit that I’ve never learned how to play the game myself, but if you were hoping to learn a move or two from this film you’re out of luck. Matches seem to begin and end in seconds with more attention placed on how Fiona’s opponents treat her than on how she beats them. If director Nair was at all interested in showing us what makes Fiona great at chess, then something went wrong.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The chess thing may sound like nitpicking, but it’s an incredibly mental game and we never fully see Fiona’s strategies or thought-process. It’d be like making a boxing movie without us seeing how they train or what their wise old coach teaches them about their opponent. The movie gets so bogged down in subplots—the coach has not just a second job offer, but a soccer hobby, a wife, an eventual kid, etc.—that we never really have time to get inside Fiona’s head (despite Nalwanga’s solid performance).