'Queen Of Katwe' Review

I had the opportunity to attend an early screening of Queen of Katwe this Wednesday, it will be released September 30th, and must say it makes a nice addition to Disney's growing number of sports dramas. Queen of Katwe tells the true story of Uganda's first chess champion, a young girl named Phiona Mutesi.

The film is directed by Mira Nair and she doesn't really contribute much of her own unique vision into the fold, but her editor certainly did. One of my issues with the film is that in the first act, many scenes are cut too short before the audience has been given a chance to respond to what they just saw, much like The Angry Birds Movie I maligned earlier this year. The film is very fast paced and strangely some of the supporting character's story arcs take precedent over Phiona's, leaving her arc to have less weight than deserved. Screenwriter William Wheeler only has so much to work with considering he's adapting a true story, ESPN article, and book but does a wonderful job interjecting humor into the proceedings through the young cast and whips up an inspiring message. 

Madina Nalwanga makes her acting debut as Phiona and does a fairly good job for a first time child actress, especially considering she's working opposite an Academy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee. The film features quite a few children actors portraying the village children, but the one who stood out to me was Ethan Nazario Lubega who played Benjamin, mustering up some hilarious comedic relief. 

Lupita Nyong'o and David Oyelowo are both fantastic in their respective mentor roles as Phiona's mother Nakku and Phiona's chess coach Robert. I also really must commend the casting director for finding black talent who so strongly resembled the actual characters, the end credits show the actors side by side the real people.

Queen of Katwe both succeeds and fails in striving to be a sports film. It has all the genre tropes that come with inspiring true stories about athletes and that's just it, in the long run Queen of Katwe is a tried and true "rags to riches" story we've come to know and are quite familiar with. Queen of Katwe is without a doubt an uplifting inspirational story with strong performances, grounded realism, and spouts of lighthearted humor but in the end comes across as a generic sports drama.

Film Assessment: C