Film Review: CRITICAL THINKING (2020): A By-The-Books Underdog Tale With No Surprise Moves

Critical Thinking Review

Critical Thinking (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by and starring John Leguizamo, and also starring Rachel Bay Jones, Michael Kenneth Williams, Corwin C. Tuggles, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Angel Bismark Curiel, Jeffry Batista, Will Hochman, Zora Casebere, Ramses Jimenez, Todd Allen Durkin, Dave Baez, and Sydney Arroyo.

It feels wrong to disregard the occasional film that has good intentions. In the case of Critical Thinking it even feels disingenuous, as doing so would seem to tacitly align one’s self with its protagonists’ oppressors that consciously and subconsciously work to keep the heroes from achieving success. That’s a clever catch-22 that director John Leguizamo sets up: positing a moral and thematic ultimatum, based on the rules of the fictionalized narrative, where your outcome will be determined by your reaction to the narrative itself. But appreciation shouldn’t be built around convoluted guilt trips, and that only serves to further highlight the shallowness behind Critical Thinking’s otherwise commendable story.

Critical Thinking follows both the biopic and underdog sports formulas to a T, in this case applying it to the students of Miami Jackson High School’s chess club in the late 1990s. The club’s five best players – Sedrick, Ito, Rodelay, Gil, and Marcel (Corwin C. Tuggles, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Angel Bismark Curiel, Will Hochman, and Jeffry Batista, respectively) – love the game and the intellectual rigor it provides. However, none of them consider it as anything but a distraction from their daily hardships – much less a way out of their families’ economic strife. But their teacher Mario Martinez (John Leguizamo) senses their greatness and urges them to keep playing, all the while scrimping and scraping together every tiny bit of community support for them that he can. In doing so, the boys keep climbing up through the tournament ranks, eventually becoming the unexpected competitors in their regional, state, and national championships.

Critical Thinking falls right in line with other rousing true stories from the past 30-odd years – from Music of the Heart to Freedom Writers to Stand and Deliver (the latter of which seems to be the go-to comparison, probably on account of the basic “Latino teacher uplifting inner-city students” framing) – and likewise Leguizamo doesn’t deviate far from the formula. Even when compared to other chess-specific films, like 2015’s Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice, Critical Thinking doesn’t feel all that different: troubled boys/men learn chess, play tournaments, and subsequently win adulation. 

When Leguizamo does change things up, though, through Martinez’s firm assertions of public education’s latent racism and the boys’ quieter moments of personal growth, the film feels honest and authentic. Leguizamo takes his character’s words literally: he digs deeper, forges his own path, and writes (or I guess films) history for himself. He also provides the film with lots of quick wit and charisma, which matches the boys’ chemistry and general sense of charm.

It’s disappointing, then, that Critical Thinking’s structural and stylistic adherence douses the story’s emotional and creative potential, comforting in its familiarity it may be. Screenwriter Dito Montiel doesn’t seem to trust the audience all that much, as the lame and oddly paced plotting offsets the film with a bunch of thematic explainers. It’s further obstructed by a lot of heavy-handed dialogue – usually right when the boys are about to showcase some personal introspection – which awkwardly slows any prior momentum it had to a sluggish crawl.

The film is shot and edited with only base-level competency (not to mention graphics that are culled straight from a video editing template), and just when it starts getting exciting with some more clever cuts and staging, the film ends – with all the saccharine shoddiness of an after-school special, to boot (albeit an informative one at that). The final result isn’t derisible but rather a disservice to its subjects, who deserve more than a dragged-out, by-the-book retelling of their successes.

What could’ve been a captivating tale of the resilience of passion set against the failings of America’s public systems is instead a clichéd presentation that suggests no worthwhile observations about surpassing it beyond the need for endless determination. Leguizamo’s effort is laudable, but Critical Thinking ultimately doesn’t do much to help broaden the mind.

Rating: 4/10

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