I have to disagree vehemently with littlesiddie (though I do love Cambridge, LS!) -- Word Wars is one of the funniest, most engrossing, and occasionally even touching movies I've seen in the past few years, and I don't even like Scrabble. The movie introduces us to 4 top Scrabble competitors, with very different backgrounds, personalities, and approaches to preparing for combat. Their stories reveal a lifestyle that is consumed with Scrabble, as the competitors spend hours memorizing obscure words and battling each other into the wee hours, oblivious to their surroundings, their poverty, their lack of girlfriends....Our heroes (no heroines; women apparently just aren't that obsessive) are at once pathetic, inspiring, and hilarious as we watch the tension build toward the ultimate showdown, the final test of memory, stamina, and individual dominance, the national championship for the big bonanza...grand prize $25,000. Are they just laughable geeks, with no sense of what's important in life? Or are they the truly enlightened, having found their Nirvana in the land of triple word scores? (Plus you learn a lot of cool words.)
