I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Absolutely amazing

There are women in the film, but none has anything you could call a personality.

This film is about a small group of professional Scrabble players. Well, professional in that they play in tournaments for money and occasionally play each other for money, though the money they actually win is almost always minimal--certainly in most cases NOT enough to pay rent or have a family. Despite this very limited payoff, these folks travel the country participating in very, very serious games--at least as serious as any high-stakes poker game! As a psychology teacher, I probably got a lot more out of this documentary than the average person. That's because instead of focusing on the games, I was fascinated by the personalities of the players, as the elite players were NOTHING like I'd expected. I had expected that they would all be great intellectuals--such as professors, Nobel Prize winners and brainiacs. However, the opposite was usually the case. Many were unemployed or worked dead-end jobs. None of them were successful in a traditional sense with jobs or family. Instead, the players were usually misfits--people lacking social graces, having severe personality disorders, filled with anger and in a few cases the players seemed on the edge of sanity. How this game dominates their lives and thinking is amazing and all-consuming--and it's truly an obsession. For the most part, I found the players to be very unlikable (especially, but certainly NOT excluding Marlon) and lacking a fully formed personality--and, interestingly enough, this didn't seem to bother these hyper-competitive players. I was also surprised to see that many didn't even seem to like the game--and one, in particular, was physically miserable during the tournaments! Yet they still played--day in and day out even though there was almost no financial compensation for doing this--even with the top players!! Fascinating, but also ultimately very sad.By the way, the language is pretty rough in spots--parents might want to think about this before letting kids watch this documentary.

Scrabble-lovers know what it's like to be hooked by the game. But for most of us, it's still only a game, not an obsession. The people in "Word Wars" live for Scrabble.The four players we meet - "G.I." Joel (gets his nickname because his gastrointestinal system's a mess and he isn't shy about it), Matt, Marlon and Joe - have turned winning Scrabble tournaments into their lives' mission. Joel's preferred beverage is Maalox; Marlon plays the angry black man, but uses his skills to help an inner-city school's Scrabble Club; Matt's more often broke than not; and three-time national champ Joe uses meditation and tai chi to psyche out his opponents, but often is so full of himself, he doesn't realize how dull his lecture on winning strategies is.Watching "Word Wars," I was reminded of "Spellbound," the Oscar-nominated documentary about the 1999 National Spelling Bee, and wondered if this is what happens to those obsessive, driven kids who fail to win the Spelling Bee.Filmmakers Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo worry less about the game than getting into the heads of these four chaps, none of whom is easily likable. They know and tolerate each other, but aren't really friends. But they enjoy a pleasant camaraderie. We even see one shave the neck hairs off another in a hotel room.Chaikin and Petrillo also have fun with the graphics, using titles as anagrams and allowing the letter tiles to float about as the players contemplate their next words.What's far more interesting than tournament play are the late-night Scrabble games in hotel rooms, Scrabble-player culture, bets placed on the side ($5 per game and a nickel per point), and Scrabble games at New York's Washington Square Park, where a local restaurateur reigns supreme, even beating Joe, who, of course, returns later for a rematch. There's also an amusing discussion about the controversy surrounding the creation of an inoffensive Scrabble dictionary.We see these four players cramming as many words as possible, rarely, if ever, bothering to learn the definitions. But there's definite skill in what they do during games and it's impressive. (We're told Matt won a game in 96 seconds!) Somehow we wind up caring about these people. When one of them gets a lousy set of tiles and walks away in frustration, we empathize. All of us who've played Scrabble have been there."Word Wars" is at times humorous, thrilling and even occasionally touchingly sad. It's not on par with, say, "Control Room," "Fahrenheit 9/11" or "Super Size Me," but there's something curiously absorbing about its peculiar people. And you really have to admire a film that expands the vocabulary of its audience. How many films can you say that about?

As a former tournament Scrabble player, this documentary was a delight to see. (I know and have played all four of the main subjects of the film.) People in that scene, especially at the top, are really that eccentric -- it's part of the allure of the tournament circuit, playing against people who are incredibly devoted to study and strategic analysis. The film accurately captures both the heart of the competitors as well as the frenetic energy that develops around trying to be the best. The documentary is informative beyond this one particular topic, in that way.As far as documentaries go, it's clearly a second-tier documentary film. (It's not a "Capturing the Friedmans", a "Fog of War", a "Startup.com".) However, if you have an interest in seeing mad geniuses at work or the game of Scrabble taken to an extreme, I recommend this film highly. (8+ out of 10)

This is one of the best documentaries I have seen in quite some time. At first I thought it was a mockumentary because it is so hilarious, but after talking with the director after (who also plays scrabble,) I know that these people are real and actually this hilarious. The people that the director follows are incredible in their own ways, from G.I. (gastrointestinal) Joel to a Tai-Chi Scrabble Master to a "badarse mothaf***a" (who lives with his mom,)... this film offers an insightful view into the competitive world of Scrabble and also the people who obsess over it and commit their lives to it (many are unemployed). This is definitely a 10. You should definitely check it out if you like "Waiting for Guffman".