Word Wars
The new Scrabble-tournament documentary "Word Wars" has the misfortune of arriving after "Spellbound," last year's National Spelling Bee hit. "Word Wars" follows fewer contestants (four) and has less magic, but it does make an interesting corollary. These Scrabble junkies could be what the kids in "Spellbound" are like in 20 years: unemployed, irascible, and endearingly strange, drifting from one contest to the next for modest-to-miserable paydays.
Directed by Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo, the film follows four men whose lives are dictated not simply by the game but by words. Matt Graham, who at the time of the filming is America's seventh-best Scrabble player, dreams in anagrams. Matt, who's relatively young, used to write for the Conan O'Brien show, and you get the sense he might have a slight gambling problem. In one scene, we see him lose $500 playing "G.I." Joel Sherman.
Joel is ranked 13th. He's scrawny and balding, with a little mustache, and is beset with all sorts of physical ailments. The "G.I." is a nod to his gastrointestinal reflux, which is liable to announce itself at the most inopportune times. Marlon Hill (ranked 23d) is an amateur black separatist. I say "amateur" only because he often appears to be the only African-American at any of the events he plays. He was raised in East Baltimore in a family of Scrabblers. And his foul mouth must be purely cathartic since four-letter words tend to make for low-scoring games. Chaikin and Petrillo could have made a fascinating movie just about Marlon's confrontational personality loosed on a game dominated by milquetoasts.
Joe Edley is the top-ranked player, and he appears to be the most well-adjusted. "Word Wars" culminates at the 2002 Scrabble nationals in San Diego, where he becomes an oddly sympathetic figure among 700 other contestants.
The countdown to the Big Tournament is not my favorite structural device. It's so foolproof it can make directors lazy. Chaikin and Petrillo include bits of Scrabble history and terminology, and they show us pickup games in New York, but the game itself is rarely brought to life.
The film finds ways of illustrating the passage of time during face-offs and plays up the eccentrics swirling around its four principals, but only occasionally do the thrill of the game and the passion of its players come together. That said, these guys' nakedly neurotic enthusiasm keeps the movie from being a total jumble.
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