Back to real documentaries! Word Wars documents life on the Scrabble tournament circuit, following four of the Scrabble world's hottest stars: GI Joel ("The GI stands for gastrointestinal," he announces, and indeed, Joel is seldom without a bottle of Maalox or a handful of Tums), Matt (a shifty dude who likes to bet on all the games and has a dresser drawer full of herbal supplements to help sharpen his brain), a guy whose name I don't remember, but who likes to do tai chi and was last year's champ, and Marlon, a reefer-loving guy from Baltimore who starts up a Scrabble club for kids in an inner-city school and also fucks a Tijuana prostitute, all in the same movie. He's awesome.
It's no surprise that Scrabble tournament champions would be a bit unique. Different. Special. Off. But altogether lovable. Even though three of the four guys (all adult men in their 30's or 40's) don't have jobs and seemingly never have, they are momentarily kings of the world when they lay down words like "inarable," a 10-point word at baseline, and rack up 110 points due to their brilliant strategy (using double/triple letter/word values, scoring a "bingo" of 50 points by using all the letters in their racks, etc.).
What I'm trying to say is this: Scrabble is an awesome game and now that I know Scrabble champions exist, I want to be one. I want to be able to hold my own against GI Joel. I want to smoke ganja in the stairwell with Marlon after I forego a turn to get rid of a rackful of vowels, only to draw another rackful of vowels. I want to talk about acupuncture with the guy whose name I don't remember. And I want to avoid that strung-out-on-gingko Matt guy, because he seems like the type of dude who'd steal your credit card.
Rating: whizzbangs (37 points, bitches!)
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