I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good idea lost in the noise

Best movie of this year hands down!

I really love these documentaries about people with weird obsessive hobbies or bizarre jobs - especially the ones about people that maybe never quite make it but just keep trying. This one's an absolute cracker because the half of the people featured in this film are just total A* fruit cakes. The scrabble itself it fairly interesting but it's much more entertaining watching these freaks battle their rampaging neurotic disorders. Yes dude, you just got SLAYED at the international championships because you didn't get acupuncture first to balance your chi. Nothing to do with it being a game of chance or anything. Seriously, who dedicates their life to a game that's half logic and half chance. Gotta love these lunatics. Great film

I have to disagree vehemently with littlesiddie (though I do love Cambridge, LS!) -- Word Wars is one of the funniest, most engrossing, and occasionally even touching movies I've seen in the past few years, and I don't even like Scrabble. The movie introduces us to 4 top Scrabble competitors, with very different backgrounds, personalities, and approaches to preparing for combat. Their stories reveal a lifestyle that is consumed with Scrabble, as the competitors spend hours memorizing obscure words and battling each other into the wee hours, oblivious to their surroundings, their poverty, their lack of girlfriends....Our heroes (no heroines; women apparently just aren't that obsessive) are at once pathetic, inspiring, and hilarious as we watch the tension build toward the ultimate showdown, the final test of memory, stamina, and individual dominance, the national championship for the big bonanza...grand prize $25,000. Are they just laughable geeks, with no sense of what's important in life? Or are they the truly enlightened, having found their Nirvana in the land of triple word scores? (Plus you learn a lot of cool words.)

This movie was inspired by Stefan Fatsis' book Word Freak. I read the book last year and really liked it, so I was looking forward to seeing the movie, which is peopled by some of the same characters. But even if you haven't read the book, the movie is still quite enjoyable. It begins several months before a National Scrabble tournament, and follows four competitors as they go through their trials and tribulations leading up to it. The filmmakers had fun with anagramming throughout the movie, and did a very good job with letting the competitors speak for themselves. Like the book, the filmmakers visit the various sites the game is played, from living rooms to a park in New York to various competitions around the country. If you enjoy playing Scrabble with friends, then you will definitely like this movie, which takes the game to a completely new level.

This film is without a doubt the best Scrabble® Documentary film yet made. The story follows the efforts of four very different top-level Scrabble® players in their attempt to win the title of 2002 National Scrabble Champion. The directors highlight the disparate backgrounds and approaches to the game of the four principles, from the Tai Chi of 3 time champion Joe Edley to the mind-enhancing pharmaceuticals of Matt Graham. The film uses engaging graphics to explain how Scrabble® is played at the pro-level, and to highlight brilliant plays and anagrams. The audience gets a chance to "play along" with many plays of the main characters and many others on the tournament circuit. In addition, the story takes a foray into the subculture of "the parkies", the serious Scrabble®-playing denizens of Washington Square Park, NYC, and the history of the controversy that created the two dictionaries in use for Scrabble® today, one for the tournament players, and one for the general public.By focusing on the people and not history of the game, Word Wars shows the tournament Scrabble® scene at its most human.