SnoopyStyle In the town of North Hatley, chess mania has taken over the local high school. New student Tommy Linklater likes to do his magic tricks. He is recruited for the chess team, The Knights, due to his late mother's legendary chess skills. Hyacinthe Marquez (Rachelle Lefevre) is the head cheerleader and honor student.This has a fun satire premise of switching the coolness factor between jocks and the chess club. It's kinda funny for a little while but it gets repetitive. The writing is not funny enough. Other than Lefevre, the cast isn't good enough. It's got one good idea but it fails to build on it.

Samuel Sloan This is a great movie, long overlooked. A small town high school is nuts about chess and everybody plays The big showdown comes when a team from the Soviet Union is flown in to play the big match. The coach for Hatley High is a Soviet defector who defected during the last chess match between the two teams. The new Russian coach is a Russian nationalist, and the rivalry is personal.On the night before the big showdown, the Russian team captain, Anya Petrovich, played by Ilona Elkin, seduces the Hatley High captain, played by James A. Woods, and tricks him by putting handcuffs on him and locking in the principal's office. When the Hatley High Captain does not appear for the big final match, the Hatley High team will be forfeited unless somebody can be pulled off the bench to play the big final game.The creators of this movie could have used a real chess consultant. Many of the moves shown on the chess board are illegal. Black moves first in the first game and, although they use chess terms like Sicilian Defense and Budapest Defense, the moves shown on the board are nothing like those openings.However, we can overlook these defects because this movie teaches us chess players important lessons about how a movie about a high school chess match can be made exciting and interesting to the general non-chess playing audience.Sam Sloan

taniav I liked this movie, as most Canadian movies tend to be less commercial and aesthetically cleaner as a consequence. It somehow manages to make dorks look cool, if only life were like that... The movie had a lot of potential, and it could have been a lot better. It starts off good then it falls into "head of the class"/ sitcom clichés with the chess plot the focus of the film, and it loses all its smarts. A shame because the kids seem smart and the lead is cute. I liked the soundtrack, it sounds like some gawky teenager in an arts highschool put it together on his synth alone in his garage, with mac and cheese in his braces and dressed in black (visualize bad skin), you can't tell if its crap or cool, but I really like it, it sounds a bit techno in an eighties depeche mode-esque. Does anyone know who is on the soundtrack?

landon-1 Staged in a small town that worships chess this movie kept me smiling all the way through. Even though it comes off as a play on the typical American "worship the football goods" type movie there are many of details that might not be apparent at first viewing. A combination of familial loss, new town acclimatization, cold war history and rook envy come together well in a movie fit for pretty much everyone.The main character, Tommy, did a good job of coming across as a complicated young man who has the initial idea of who he is but still has the rough edges to work on. Hyacinth, well, other than everyone falling in love with her while she keeps Tommy dancing, I expect to see her again in more movies as she has a good energy that is transferred here.This is a movie that makes me glad to be a Canadian!