Josh Waitzkin is just a typical American boy interested in baseball when one day he challenges his father at chess and wins. Showing unusual precocity at the outdoor matches at Washington Square in New York City, he quickly makes friends with a hustler named Vinnie who teaches him speed chess. Josh's parents hire a renowned chess coach, Bruce, who teaches Josh the usefulness of measured planning. Along the way Josh becomes tired of Bruce's system and chess in general and purp... (Full plot summary below)
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Josh Waitzkin is just a typical American boy interested in baseball when one day he challenges his father at chess and wins. Showing unusual precocity at the outdoor matches at Washington Square in New York City, he quickly makes friends with a hustler named Vinnie who teaches him speed chess. Josh's parents hire a renowned chess coach, Bruce, who teaches Josh the usefulness of measured planning. Along the way Josh becomes tired of Bruce's system and chess in general and purposely throws a match, leaving the prospects of winning a national championship in serious jeopardy.
Leave your thoughts about Searching for Bobby Fischer.
| VarietyVariety StaffPomeranc is wonderfully real and wide-eyed as Josh, with a raspy voice and slight lisp recalling Linus from the Peanuts cartoons. |
| EspinofAlberto AbuínA film full of love and passion for chess, especially when it gets compare with life in general. [Full review in Spanish] |
| Time OutDerek AdamsTrue, James Horner's score seems to have strayed in from a fists-in-the-air crowd-pleaser, but it's the one weak link in an accomplished, unexpectedly winning movie. |
| Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertA film of remarkable sensitivity and insight. |
| Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanA wonderful movie, a delicate and touching drama that takes us deep inside the eccentric competitive mystique of grandmaster chess. |
| Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranWriter-director Steven Zaillian proves as much of a prodigy as his chess-playing subject, turning out a film that is a beautifully calibrated model of honestly sentimental filmmaking, made with delicacy, restraint and unmistakable emotional power. The feelings it goes for are almost never the easy or obvious ones, and the levers it presses are all the more effective because of that. |
| Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallEven though this film may do for chess what "The Red Shoes" did for ballet, it works movingly and most effectively as a family drama. |
| Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumOne of the craftiest and most satisfying pieces about gender politics to come along in ages. |
| Hartford CourantMalcolm JohnsonZaillian brings Searching for Bobby Fischer to a satisfying ending, but throughout the film he holds us with the finely balanced writing of his screenplay and with his ability to penetrate into the mysteries of chess. |
| Washington PostRita KempleyA wonderfully acted, heartwarming family film, it suffers from a goopy score, but not in the least from its potentially stalemated subject matter. Zaillian can make a chess tournament look like the Threepeat. |
