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Bobby Fischer Against The World: Season 1
  • Network: HBO
  • Series Premiere Date: Jun 6, 2011
  • Season #: 1
Bobby Fischer Against The World Image
Metascore
82 out of 100

Universal acclaim - based on 8 Critics What's this?

User Score
6.2 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 6 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Summary: The documentary directed by Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Liz Garbus, explores the life of Bobby Fischer from his 1972 match with Russian Boris Spassky to his subsequent exile in Iceland.
  • Genre(s): Reality, News/Documentary

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 8
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 8
  3. Negative: 0 out of 8
  1. Uncle Barky
    Reviewed by: Ed Bark
    Jun 6, 2011
    100
    So far it's the televised documentary film of the year, with its truths stranger than fiction from opening move to checkmate.
  2. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Sam Allis
    Jun 6, 2011
    90
    Robert James Fischer's story is astonishing on and off the chess board, and tonight's HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World captures it well.
  3. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: David Hinckley
    Jun 6, 2011
    80
    [Garbus] captures the epic, almost mythical scope of his talent and thus the tragic height of his fall.

See all 8 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. jdb26354
    10
    Documentary of chess prodigy pursues world cliché championship. Left alone by a hippie mother with a bottle of Drano and a book on chess tactics, the 6-year old Fischer takes the slower but surer poison of intellectual obsession resulting in worldwide acclaim and emotional isolation. More mysterious than the origins of Fischer’s ascent, on which this documentary sheds little new light, is why apparently the only female to latch onto him was a 19 year old Hungarian girl some 15 years after he forfeited his world title. No matter, despite demonstrating the failings of humanity, principally paunch and pontification cast as paranoia, Fischer shows future generations the way forward by becoming an expatriate and exiting stage left at age 64, when the evidence presented suggests he could have clung to life long enough to begin drawing on Social Security.… Expand
    • 0 of 1 users said yes