Review of Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) by Alvin Y — 15 Nov 2010

First of all, the main character of this film is not Bobby Fischer, his name is Josh Waitzkin. I think the meaning of the film's title is the search for the next Bobby Fischer figure. Well then, who is this Bobby Fischer? He was a chess prodigy or should I say a king in chess, he defeated almost all of those people around the world that are also good in chess. Unfortunately, the only way that we get to see and know Bobby Fischer in this film is on the black & white footages shown throughout the film, and the rest is of course our guy Josh, so then next question is, who is this Josh kid?

Let's start. At the beginning of the film, there is this B&W scene where we can see who and what Bobby Fischer is, and then we jump to the present where we can see this kid named Josh. When we get to notice and study Josh at first, he loves to play sports such as Baseball but what we didn't know, he also knows how to play chess. Josh's parents are the first people who realizes his hidden talent, by then his father hires a chess teacher to teach him more than what he knows. Well, Josh really knows chess like an advanced level game, it's only nothing for him, he also plays chess faster not without thinking. So, to those techniques that Josh has, his teacher Bruce, teaches him how to play balanced and well. Of course, our main guy wins a lot of trophies but at the middle portion of the movie, he was lost in one game, and what his father and his teacher says, never give up because losing is nothing but his mother wants to stop him playing this game. And when it ended, as you know, final championship game, and he won. That's pretty much all what this film is about.

To sum it up, I think it is one of the most inspiring and yet satisfying biographies ever attempted to filmed. I am not good in chess but this film works out a lot to me, I don't tend to care the pieces where they should go in the board, what I liked and cared about are the performances, story, and of course a valuable moral lesson which I said earlier. And what I also think that works here is that Josh is somewhat a person that can relate to the real Bobby Fischer. Wherever this Josh is now living today, I think he still plays chess or even teaches chess to some people, as we know at the epilogue we found out that Josh still plays chess, so that's 17 years past, probably he is grown up. So, I liked this movie a lot, and I wish to see more Bobby Fischer than Josh but that's alright, it's a true story and yet an unbelievable story of success, and sacrifices to be the next Bobby Fischer. To that, 5 stars, and Bobby Fischer is now found in the character of Josh Waitzkin!