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Critics Consensus: Brooklyn Castle is a warm, engaging, and even uplifting documentary about chess-playing whiz kids.
Critic Consensus: Brooklyn Castle is a warm, engaging, and even uplifting documentary about chess-playing whiz kids.
All Critics (51) | Top Critics (24) | Fresh (49) | Rotten (2)
Brooklyn Castle does a superb job of celebrating the triumph while reinforcing the relentless vigilance it requires from everyone involved.
Brooklyn Castle is inspiring stuff that grabs you by the throat and will leave you cheering - quietly of course. No shouting in a chess match.
There's a general spirit of triumph and perseverance to "Brooklyn Castle" that's inevitably uplifting.
"Brooklyn Castle" easily checkmates your inner cynic.
Katie Dellamaggiore's lively and affecting documentary introduces us to a cast of characters that's very winning (in both senses of the word).
It's not To Sir, With Love: It's fierce ambition, the channeling of emotion, and hours of drilling.
With Brooklyn Castle it's really nice to see so many young, positive minds at play in the world, and to cheer on so many smiling children dreaming of enlightened futures.
... a powerful and positive story about dedicated teachers helping kids succeed no matter what their circumstances
Like chess, not exactly a high-energy experience but seeing what these kids accomplish, seemingly against all odds is breathtaking all the same.
...provides a corrective to the popular image of American schools as obsessed with sports and popularity, and it makes the strongest possible case for funding after-school activities.
Chess, brilliant young students and great teachers potent mix.
The I.S. 318 team? A delightfully motley, vulnerable, multicultural bunch, whose addiction to chess has allowed them higher aspirations for top high schools and, eventually, college and careers. You will root for them like crazy.
One one level, "Brooklyn Castle" is an occasionally suspenseful documentary that also makes unfortunate use of stop motion effects about the dynasty of championships won by the chess teams at I.S. 318 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. That winning streak continues even though players like Rochelle graduate and seek to continue their study of the game at a higher level, because new players like Justus enter the school, even though he has to travel all the way from the Bronx on a daily basis. On a much wider and more important level, "Brooklyn Castle" makes a great case for why such extracurricular activities are important, and not just because they might keep kids off the street. What this extremely successful program also does is allow the students to travel outside New York City for tournaments, while chess exercises their brains and is an activity that prizes sportmanship.(I love the handshake before and after matches, by the way.) So while they think six moves ahead in the game, they also become prepared to do so in real life, as the documentary also provides insight into the structure of the New York City school system. All of which is threatened is by severe budget cuts after the 2008 recession. As one student says, the last thing that should be cut from any budget is education.
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