Bobby Fischer Live (2009) User Reviews

Nice try . . . but mostly failed

[ppantazis · 3/10 · 22 August 2011]

Thanks to the title of this movie, and because I am one of the million fans of Bobby, I was thrilled sitting in front of my TV and starting it. About 25 minutes later I made my first brake, not because I was tired, but urged to my chessbooks to see if I had really so wrong informations about this chess star. I have read his biography from many opinions, and they were all quit close. But this movie tried to change all the historical data, or the producer had no idea of the true history of Bobby Fischer. Anyway, if someone focuses on the plot, and not the bad acting, and can ignore the errors made in the movie, this is some kind of a try to see all the incredible chess action of a huge person from a specific angle, the human touch. There are some scenes causing pity for Bobby, and this was indeed the generic feeling of most of us for him. The lonely fighter, on and off the chessboard, is slightly approached by Damian Chapa, but please, read the history books next time, and pleeease learn to play chess.

A Major Disappointment

[Zwischenzug64 · 1/10 · 18 June 2010]

After seeing the trailer for Bobby Fischer Live, I managed to track it down and could not have been more disappointed. The film fails on so many levels that it is difficult to know where to begin. Let's start with the premise. A book publisher wants a new work on Bobby Fischer, so he chooses a chain smoking alcoholic writer who knows nothing about chess or Fischer. It is left to us to wonder why a publisher would make such a decision when there are many excellent writers that are knowledgeable about chess and do not have substance abuse problems. As we watch the writer doing his research, it becomes clear that there was no chess consultant used for this film. Chess pieces are often set up incorrectly on the boards. Chess terminology is misused such as the actor playing Boris Spassky referring to the 1972 match as a tournament. Dr.Zukhar, the hypnotist from the Karpov/Korchnoi 1978 World Championship match was somehow transported via time machine to Fischer/Spassky 1972!! Fictional people are invented. I don't recall anyone named Coach Gary assisting Fischer in the World Championship. Real people that influenced Bobby such as his teacher Jack Collins are missing in action. Two games from the 1972 match are shown. The critical Game 3 when Bobby had his first win over Spassky and the final Game 21. In both of these recreations, Fischer is shown playing the wrong color pieces. According this this film, Fischer forfeited Game 2 because he overslept! No mention is made of the film maker Chester Fox and the conflict that kept Game 2 from being played. The budget was apparently so low for the film that the World Championship match in Iceland had an audience of only 12 people. The casting is terrible. Fischer is presented first as a chubby little boy and then looks like a 45 year old overweight man who should be a thin 27 year old. There is a scene with Fischer playing with a gun as a child which is probably a complete fabrication. We are led to believe in this film that all of Fischer's problems stem from his mother's separation from his father and her refusal to provide information to Bobby about who his father is. None of the events that shaped Fischer's career such as his match with Reshevsky and his ongoing struggles with match and tournament organizers is mentioned. None of Fischer's achievements such as his elevating playing conditions, raising the amount of prize funds, the Fischer clock, Fischer Random Chess or his chess writings are mentioned. Fischer's later life in the Philippines and Japan are not in the film. My impression is that the director is very much like the writer in his movie, he has heard of Fischer but has no familiarity with the chess world. There is a way that experienced players behave at the board, touch the pieces and the clock and there is no sense of this here. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer captured this very well. The film will be a disappointment to chess fans, and misleading to the general public. Someday I hope that we see a truly comprehensive film about this complex man and the world that he dominated.

why creating such a movie?

[alammers · 1/10 · 8 November 2010]

I hardly never vote 1 but this film asks for it. Beside the awful cast, role-play, event & scene selection you might think this movie is funded by guys who hated Fischer more then he did other way around. Typical to start with is his mother, who played an important role in his life and in the movie she does too, but almost characteristic. Now she acts like she is a cheap whore with the total opposite intellect of her son which is besides reality. For the start of this movie quite annoying to see. However, I watched the whole movie because I could not believe nor accept the idea behind. Almost all the downers of Fischer life were put into this movie and hardly none of his uppers are mentioned. Unbalanced and hard to believe any positive thoughts of the creators. The movie insults the audience. I think that the voters who put 10 out of 10 are somehow directly related to this movie e.g. playing a role. Maybe not all the roles are that bad but most of them could be nominated for worst performing actors. High-likely all not having any chess knowledge otherwise they had refused their roles.

Disappointing on a number of levels

[mgolden-180-66594 · 8 October 2011]

This was clearly done on a very low budget and it shows in the production values; it is clearly an attempt to tell a story about a compelling and tragic individual by people who don't know anything much about chess - but that's not what I hold against this film.

It is presented in a pseudo-documentary style - the attention to detail and accuracy in recreating some existing news footage and interviews with Bobby is uncanny.

That suggests an intention to veracity that unfortunately is utterly lacking - the rest of the story is so far removed (if not utterly contradictory to) the facts of Bobby's biography that the slice of life recreations are all the more frustrating.

Bobby's mother is portrayed as a pyschotic, paranoid schizophrenic who abandons Bobby and disappears from his life entirely when he was still a teenager - when she was in fact a loving, intelligent, accomplished, if somewhat eccentric woman who never abandoned a son she clearly loved and attempted to support throughout his entire, troubled life. (She financially supported him during his "wilderness years" after the 72 world championship when the money ran out and he lived on skid row in Los Angeles and remained in contact with him --- on affectionate terms - throughout his entire life.

Bobby is portrayed as harboring violent and generically racist views (not just against the Jews, but against blacks) from a very young age, when his particular and virulent pathology was limited to the Jews, and emerged slowly and steadilly throughout his life, in a crescendo of truly horrifying scope by the end. In the end, that hatred did encompass a broad swath of humanity, but only because in his mind they were manipulated and controlled by a vast, global Jewish conspiracy.

OK, so it isn't a work of non-fiction, despite its pretensions to suggest it is. But even if you allow for artistic license with historical reality, it is so poorly done that it lacks any coherence even if you try to accept it on its own terms.

Even the conceit of the researching journalist is ham fisted and illogical. We get a tearful epiphany from the journalist late in the film when he confesses he understands Fischer because he is so much like Fischer, when there is absolutely NO nexus: how does being an otherwise stable and adjusted professional who went to pieces and to drink over the death of his infant son form any basis for understanding even the fictional grasp of Fischer that the film created? (A genius at the chess board, suffering from abandonment by a father he never new and a schizo mother?) So it utterly fails even on the entirely fictional terms it lays out.

The plot itself is also devoid of logic or coherence. Even if you skip over the implausability of this writer being selected to do this book, out of the blue ...we have to swallow the plot device of the writer traveling to Moscow for research (a questionable plot device on its face) where he is sought out and found by a fictional woman who knew Bobby in Rejkiavic. What the hell was she doing in Moscow and how did she know where to find the writer there? The newsreel recreations are fun ... but not enough to make this mess of a film worth enduring.

Not a very interesting film about chess genius Bobby Fischer.

[TxMike · 18 July 2012]

Bobby Fischer and I have a connection of sorts. I only knew about chess as 1972 began, a 26-year-old who had no idea what chess really was, and certainly no idea how it was played. In 1972 I became an avid chess player, only because of the publicity of the world championship matches, which Bobby Fischer won. He was only 2 years older than I.

So with that as my personal background, I was curious about this film, a biography of sorts. It isn't a very good film. Bobby Fischer was a distinctive person, obviously a genius with a funny sense of humor and a nervous smile when he was being interviewed, as he was on the Dick Cavett show in 1971. The actors here do not capture any of the essence of Bobby Fischer, and way too little film time is spent on Fischer's matches, while too much is spent on speculation why he was as he was.

Damian Chapa plays the adult Bobby Fischer, while his sons play Fischer at two other ages, Ricco Chapa for Fischer at age 15 and Presly Chapa for Fischer at age 6. Dad Damian also directed so it was a total family affair. On one level I admire a family project, but some of it looked quite like the family movies we made on videotape back in the 1970s and 1980s.

For those who may really be interested in Bobby Fischer you can get more out of viewing a few of the videos available on YouTube. The 1971 interview on the Dick Cavett show is my favorite, it shows the essence of Bobby Fischer in a non-competitive setting and that 7 minutes is worth more than all of this film's time.