Chess is the new boxing. Want an easy way to define your heroine’s metaphorical struggle without spelling it out? Chess it is. She hones her skill set. She sizes up her opponent. She does battle. She is defined by the experience. And if she’s good enough, she even has an audience. That’s boxing. You get that, right? Less blood. More brains. But it’s essentially the same thing.
In the dirt-paved village of Katwe, Uganda, the impoverished masses make their living peddling rotten food to people without money. Single mother Nakku (Lupita Nyong’o) and her children live worse than most which means they’re always one bad maize day from the street. Teenage Phiona (Madina Nalwanga) has a life about as unwestern as one gets: unschooled, illiterate, selling goods while the sun is up … privacy in their one-room house is rare, as is dinner, bathing is rarer still. But her little brother seems to be happy and fed these days; what’s up with that?
The answer: Chess Club. The first rule of Chess Club, of course, is you don’t talk about Chess Club, so Phiona has to stalk him like Popeye Doyle following a perp. And Chess is everything Phiona dreams of – free oatmeal! It’s Christmas in Katwe, I tells ya. The Club is financed and run entirely by local school teacher Robert Katende (David Oyelowo). You think Oyelowo had his concerned face at work in Selma? You have no idea. Just wait until he figures out Phiona is a prodigy; he may as well wear the perpetually concerned look 24/7.
Queen of Katwe is the tale of Phiona’s rise from the slums of the Ugandan soil. I’m not sure how much of this rings true. Her wild-in-love sister, Night (Taryn Kyaze) — seriously? Does this chess prodigy really have a sister named “night?” What are her brothers named? “Pon?” “Cassel?” – seems like a character straight from the set of West Side Story. Mom has her issues, too. Every day is an A-maize-ing Race to make rent, yet she has to be convinced as to the benefit of her national chess champion daughter getting an education. Geez, and I just read an article about how intelligence filters through the maternal line – could Phiona be adopted?
Despite the feel good screenplay, not everything works in this film and some of the things that don’t work strike me as a tad disturbing. For one thing, Phiona doesn’t beat a single Caucasian player on screen; her major battle 
with a smarmy Canadian is flat out awkward: Phiona’s lip-gloss-in-human-form opponent would clearly appear much more comfortable on the set of Mean Girls III than behind a chess board.
This film feels like another extension of the Disney outreach program to sell products to[read: to corrupt] all the children of the world. What’s next? Polynesia? Oh yeah, that is next, isn’t it? Admittedly, there are worse things in this world and we should applaud Disney for trying. I have no doubt that greed ultimately motivates all of Disney’s actions, but at the end of the day, there’s a positive tale about Ugandans set in Uganda with Disney’s name on it. This is ultimately a force of more good than evil.
♪I see my rook capturing your knight
Causing crowd murmurs of some frenzied conversation
She’s flanking the bishop on my right
Foolishness in column H won’t guide her towards salvation
I checked the old man standing by
Hoping to recall long forgotten words or ancient strategies
He turned to me as if to say, “Hurry, girl, I foresee mate in two”
It’s gonna take a lot to stave off checkmate, true
There’s nothing that a hundred pawns or more could ever do
I play chess down in Africa
Gonna take some time to punch the clock and etch the pad♫
Rated PG, 124 Minutes
D: Mira Nair
W: William Wheeler
Genre: Attacking assumptions
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Citizens of Katwe
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Those who lack the patience for a Ugandan struggle
♪ Parody inspired by “Africa”
