Tetris (2023)
I have a great interest in all kinds of computer history and I think there is a great number of good stories that have potential for amazing movies. I had high hopes for a movie about Tetris, but found myself being very disappointed with this.
The first half hour is just really dumb and feels completely off. The use of pixel graphics wasn’t a bad idea, but was way overused and then almost completely gone for the rest of the movie. I understand the need to do some exposition and explaining some stuff so everyone knows the backstory, but this was simply handled extremely poorly. Every character is like a cartoon parody and all their lines are unnatural and sounds like they are just made to be in the trailer. And I know scriptwriters have to cut some corners in terms of realism to compress a complex series of events, but seeing Henk reprogram Tetris for the GameBoy in mere minutes was just way out there.
Once Henk goes to Russia though about 30 minutes in, the movie becomes for a lack of a better description normal and somewhat decent. Dialogue feels natural and all the shenanigans with contracts and rights wasn’t half bad. Still, it seemed like the movie didn’t quite know which foot to stand on between somewhat serious or cartoonish stereotypes. Especially Trifonov was a bit out there in terms of a caricature of a Russian villain.
I didn’t outright hate the movie, because the general idea of using the fight over Tetris rights as a vehicle for also telling about the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 80s was pretty good. There is plenty of potential here for something really good, but this movie didn’t dare take the content and the history seriously and instead went for something that tries to be both somewhat silly and telling a larger political story but succeeding in neither of them.
Rating: 2.5