I was loving this (pretty much) right up until the last episode when a woke deus ex machina suddenly appears in a Corvair to save the day. The cinematography is nice and the story of triumph rolls right along sans all the normal impediments one might expect. The adoptive mother goes right along with our heroes desire to be a chess champ. I never expected that to be so easy for her, and it was a little too convenient that the father left town and never returned.

There ARE a few other implausibilities that annoyed me, like the fact that an 8 year old would become addicted to tranquilizers to the degree that Beth did. Was her mother an addict? That was never even hinted at. People generally don’t develop severe addictions on their own without at least some genetic motivation and you can’t have something that big happen in a film story without explaining it.

And what about all the free time she was allowed playing chess in the basement of the orphanage with the custodian. Also, I’m not sure how ALL the dancing came into it, because young Beth never danced around alone in her room.

And, another thing I don’t fully understand is Beth’s desire to be a chess champion. Sure, she loves playing, but where did the inherent need to be the best chess player on Earth come from? That was never explained at all and I expected it to maybe be motivated by a need to make money since the adoptive father abounded her and the mother, but nope, that didn’t even happen.

When a character is driven to do something, it’s generally because of some deep seated need, but in this film, we never see that need. It’s just there, and that’s lazy writing.