Chris Knipp
12-09-2014, 03:02 PM
Evan Oppenheimer: A Little Game (2014)
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MAKENNA BALLARD AND F. MURRAY ABRAHAM IN A LITTLE GAME
Lower Manhattan vs. the Upper East Side in a kid's movie about chess
A Little Game is a bright, cheery movie about a little girl in a big city that's a little overstuffed with life lessons, but its charm is its New York kids. They're really New York. You can't put over anything on them, and they're smart and talk back with non-stop aplomb even when they don't have the answers. In this very Lower Manhattan story, Max (Makenna Ballard), a 10-year-old girl from PS 41 in the West Village who transfers because she's very smart, is ostracized at her fancy new Upper East Side all-girls school and shaken by the death of her beloved Greek grandmother (Olympia Dukakis), who lives in Astoria, Queens. She learns how to be resilient and persevere when an irascible chess master (F. Murray Abraham) in Washington Square, two blocks from where she lives, becomes her unlikely mentor. Janeane Garofalo and Ralph Macchio play Max's mom and dad.
Ralph Macchio, of course, is famous for the Karate Kid movies. And there's a tie-in, because Max gets into a Karate-Kid relationship with her own oddball mentor, her own Mr. Miyagi, if you will, in Norman, the chess instructor in Washington Square, who uses chess as a basis for lessons in life to teach Max to be an old-fashioned street-wise "city kid," unlike the soft kids with nannies all around them now even in Washington Square and especially at her new school. The way Norman sends Max out looking for chess moves in the city seems over-literal, even when it injects an element of magic realism. The best moments are the ones when Norman and Max spar verbally, each showing the other with a New York direcgtness how unflappable and cool they are.
Max's dad works as a building super, not a lucrative post, and his mom, who's a cook, has to go to Boston to make enough to pay for her fancy new school, the Blackstone Academy. In time Max acquires a best friend at the school, Becky (Oona Laurence), but is tormented by the pretty, alpha girl, Isabella (Fátima Ptasek), her self-appointed nemesis, whom she wants to beat in chess. Her best ally, though, may be the wise-ass tall kid from PS 41, Jaden (Gabriel Rush). The Blackstone kids all have nannies and are picked up by drivers in huge black SUVs, while Max goes home by herself on the subway. Isabella and Max have their chess showdown in Washington Square with Becky, Jaden, and Norman in Max's corner and Isabella backed up by her Tibetan nanny and her Russian chess coach.
A Little Game is all about being true to your school, listening to your dead grandmother, and sticking to the neighborhood. Oppenheimer was true to these principles in making his movie. He got his two producers from PS 41 (the real one, the Greenwich Village School), whose sons went there, as did his daughter. And F. Murray Abraham's granddaughter went there too, besides which he himself lives a five-minute walk from the chess boards of Washington Square. The movie hates metaphors, or Max does, but it relies on them too: one is drawn from a pizza place across the street from PS 41, which, just as Norman warns, has now closed.
A Little Game is so full of life lessons for kids it's almost an instructional film. But it's sweet and maintains a light touch and has that downtown New York angle, and authentic Manhattan locations. The clever screenplay will appeal to parents with young children, and perhaps to their kids too.
This is writer/director Oppenheimer's fifth feature.
A Little Game, 92 mins., debuted at Newport April 2014. Won an award at the International Family Film festival. Theatrical release (Quad Cinema, NYC) 12 December; VOD (Netflix, Walmart) January 2015.
http://www.chrisknipp.com/newpictures/LG.jpg
MAKENNA BALLARD AND F. MURRAY ABRAHAM IN A LITTLE GAME
Lower Manhattan vs. the Upper East Side in a kid's movie about chess
A Little Game is a bright, cheery movie about a little girl in a big city that's a little overstuffed with life lessons, but its charm is its New York kids. They're really New York. You can't put over anything on them, and they're smart and talk back with non-stop aplomb even when they don't have the answers. In this very Lower Manhattan story, Max (Makenna Ballard), a 10-year-old girl from PS 41 in the West Village who transfers because she's very smart, is ostracized at her fancy new Upper East Side all-girls school and shaken by the death of her beloved Greek grandmother (Olympia Dukakis), who lives in Astoria, Queens. She learns how to be resilient and persevere when an irascible chess master (F. Murray Abraham) in Washington Square, two blocks from where she lives, becomes her unlikely mentor. Janeane Garofalo and Ralph Macchio play Max's mom and dad.
Ralph Macchio, of course, is famous for the Karate Kid movies. And there's a tie-in, because Max gets into a Karate-Kid relationship with her own oddball mentor, her own Mr. Miyagi, if you will, in Norman, the chess instructor in Washington Square, who uses chess as a basis for lessons in life to teach Max to be an old-fashioned street-wise "city kid," unlike the soft kids with nannies all around them now even in Washington Square and especially at her new school. The way Norman sends Max out looking for chess moves in the city seems over-literal, even when it injects an element of magic realism. The best moments are the ones when Norman and Max spar verbally, each showing the other with a New York direcgtness how unflappable and cool they are.
Max's dad works as a building super, not a lucrative post, and his mom, who's a cook, has to go to Boston to make enough to pay for her fancy new school, the Blackstone Academy. In time Max acquires a best friend at the school, Becky (Oona Laurence), but is tormented by the pretty, alpha girl, Isabella (Fátima Ptasek), her self-appointed nemesis, whom she wants to beat in chess. Her best ally, though, may be the wise-ass tall kid from PS 41, Jaden (Gabriel Rush). The Blackstone kids all have nannies and are picked up by drivers in huge black SUVs, while Max goes home by herself on the subway. Isabella and Max have their chess showdown in Washington Square with Becky, Jaden, and Norman in Max's corner and Isabella backed up by her Tibetan nanny and her Russian chess coach.
A Little Game is all about being true to your school, listening to your dead grandmother, and sticking to the neighborhood. Oppenheimer was true to these principles in making his movie. He got his two producers from PS 41 (the real one, the Greenwich Village School), whose sons went there, as did his daughter. And F. Murray Abraham's granddaughter went there too, besides which he himself lives a five-minute walk from the chess boards of Washington Square. The movie hates metaphors, or Max does, but it relies on them too: one is drawn from a pizza place across the street from PS 41, which, just as Norman warns, has now closed.
A Little Game is so full of life lessons for kids it's almost an instructional film. But it's sweet and maintains a light touch and has that downtown New York angle, and authentic Manhattan locations. The clever screenplay will appeal to parents with young children, and perhaps to their kids too.
This is writer/director Oppenheimer's fifth feature.
A Little Game, 92 mins., debuted at Newport April 2014. Won an award at the International Family Film festival. Theatrical release (Quad Cinema, NYC) 12 December; VOD (Netflix, Walmart) January 2015.