Queen of Katwe

Wed­gies, ruck­sacks tossed out the win­dow, shoes under the taps, pen­cil case in the bin… these are just some of nec­es­sary pun­ish­ments bestowed upon young British stu­dents for admit­ting that they attend chess club. Mira Nair’s new fea­ture, Queen of Katwe, seeks to prove that it’s more than a sor­did safe haven for latchkey nerds and blub­ber­ing mummy’s boys.

Adapt­ed from a non-fic­tion best­seller by Tim Crothers, it tells of Phiona Mute­si (Mad­i­na Nal­wan­ga), an intro­vert­ed, under­stand­ably dole­ful teen liv­ing in the tum­ble­down slum of Katwe in Ugnan­da. Her proud moth­er (Lupi­ta Nyong’o) refus­es to sell off her dig­ni­ty in the name of bring­ing up her chil­dren, and so coerces Phiona and her broth­ers to wan­der the street sell­ing maize to passers by. The set­ting is unmis­tak­ably rough and unfor­giv­ing, but this being a Dis­ney pro­duc­tion clear­ly aimed at slight­ly younger demo­graph­ic, the hot colours are boost­ed and the polit­i­cal edges are smoothed down. It offers a rather quaint vision of extreme pover­ty, where despite the dai­ly toil, every­one remains smil­ing and hopeful.

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One day Phiona wan­ders into a shack in which local youth organ­is­er Robert Katende (David Oyelowo, prov­ing that even in a gener­ic coach role, he’s will­ing to give it his every­thing) is teach­ing chil­dren to play chess. As a way to escape the drudgery and humil­i­a­tion of her rou­tine, she decides to give it a go. She quick­ly dis­cov­ers that she’s rather handy at the game, while Katende offers much corny wis­dom on how the strat­e­gy involved in chess actu­al­ly has plen­ty of real-world applications.

It’s not long before the film set­tles into a stan­dard under­dog sports movie mode, as Phiona must sup­press her per­son­al demons and com­pre­hend that she does have the where­with­al to rise up out of the ghet­to and dis­con­nect from her past. There’s a soft ten­sion with her moth­er, who resents that her daugh­ter should have this way out when she was forced to spend much of her life des­per­ate­ly scrab­bling for the next meal. To her, fac­ing life’s hard­ships head-on is a far bet­ter use of time than a stu­pid board game.

Nair strug­gles to sex-up the high­ly unex­cit­ing game of chess as a spec­ta­tor sport, and she doesn’t expend too much screen time explain­ing the rules in any detail. Still, if the pur­pose of the film is to get kids to put down their Uzi 9mms and pick up some nice, hand-carved antique chess pieces, it cer­tain­ly has mer­it on that lev­el. Nal­wan­ga dials back the sen­ti­ment and any overt emot­ing in her lead per­for­mance, though she still remains an empa­thet­ic and nobel hero­ine. Giv­en its pre­dictabil­i­ty, the mate­r­i­al feels rather over-stretched at 124 min­utes, but the time pass­es eas­i­ly enough.