Queen of Katwe

Another dreadfully well-intentioned, insipidly inspirational sports movie from Disney, only this time the great Indian American filmmaker Mira Nair gets sucked into the whirlpool of treacle. Newcomer Madina Nalwanga stars as Phiona Mutesi, a real-life Ugandan teenager who rose out of the slums of Katwe to become a highly touted chess prodigy. David Oyelowo plays Phiona’s twinkly-eyed coach and Lupita Nyong’o plays her long-suffering mother, and they both ham it up without mercy. Insanely overlong for a film almost utterly devoid of conflict and original ideas, Queen of Katwe is adapted from the Tim Crothers book The Queen of Katwe: A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl’s Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster, a title that spoils every scrap of plot that exists. The film is so moistly noble and lifeless that it could be a museum installation—it makes you feel like a monster just for hating it. D.B.