French Hollywood is at it again, following old, discarded formulae and selling it back to Americans. Queen to Play is a blended rehash of The Karate Kid, Educating Rita, and Searching For Bobby Fischer, with a few key rip-offs of the Japanese film Shall We Dance thrown in. The result is not bad, and certainly Sandrine Bonnaire is always a welcome presence in any movie. But it’s frankly a bit boring. As a “sports” movie, it fails the most important test: it creates no dialog texture on the topic of the game itself. They explain to you nothing about the game of chess, so all you see are a lot of head shots of people looking thoughtful as they stare at chess boards – not interesting. It’s a film about her learning to play chess, couldn’t they include just one scene where she actually learns something? Instead all we get are these lame-ass lines tossed out there, like Kevin Klein giving the advice “remember, the threat is more powerful than the action,” but since there’s no context, it just falls flat.

As for the underlying human story, again it’s dull. Her husband is not very likable or believable, nor is her daughter. Kevin Klein is supremely unbelievable and is very distracting as well, and in addition his French does not sound at the level of the rest of the French cast (to my ears, anyway.) Their friendship feels rather superficial, again because there’s no dialog. And even the ending, which should have been at least a little moving, winds up leaving you rather cold; perhaps it’s because Sandrine Bonnaire doesn’t look all that happy at the end, despite everything she has accomplished.

I can’t really recommend Queen To Play.