Scrabble Club

Well, this weekend the Oscars were no surprise. As everyone guessed, Scrabble took home the Academy Award in every category, including best animated short. Scrabble tells the story of a posse of paraplegic blind kids who get arrested for stealing cars and selling drugs. Oh, did I mention they are also inner city youth from broken homes? During their trial, the judge tells them they can either go to prison or they can start-you guessed it-a Scrabble club. After a pep talk from the teenage rebel with a heart of gold, the gang of blind thieving cripples decides to choose Scrabble over lockdown.

The first couple of attempts are heartbreaking as the kids knock the tiles all over the floor because they can't see them and then they can't pick them up because... well, they're in wheelchairs. Eventually they develop a system involving Braille and Velcro and SURPRISE! They are really good. Suddenly, and without warning, the little brother of the reformed-gang-leader-turned-Scrabble-captain has a brain aneurism and needs a brain transplant. The kids enter a Scrabble tournament against all the local schools including their cross-lake rival Upper East Side High, where the winner gets $250, just enough for a brand new brain.

The Scrabble Tournament is heated. Obviously, the private school kids throw a fit about the Braille and Velcro, saying, "But Sir, that can't be legal, the board's all fuzzy and the tiles are all prickly-like." Out comes the rulebook and after the ref reviews the tape, he proclaims: "There's nothing in the rulebook which says you can't cover the board with Velcro and bumps." The crippled, blind reformed gangbangers would jump for joy if they could. After 16 rounds of intense scrabbling, including one very suspenseful challenge, the unable-to-see, two-wheeling, no-longer-car-stealing-or-drug-dealing reenrolled high schoolers meet the privileged private school team.

That's when disaster strikes in the form of aliens invading. No, just kidding, that's totally unrealistic. Instead, the little brother just dies, so now they're playing for pride points, "Don't tell me what I can and can't do!" Will the captain's little brother magically appear to tell him his father would be proud? Will his father show up and yell, "That's my boy!" Or will he tell him, "The wrong kid died!" You'll have to check it out for yourself. Critics are already putting it the same league as The Great Debaters, Murderball and Mighty Ducks 3. Who the hell can turn down a feel gooder of this magnitude?