“The Hobby” tells us in the first half hour that it was Simon Ennis who introduced his friend Dan Corbett to board games. They spent part of their quarantine at Corbett’s cabin in the Canadian woods, where Ennis brought Terraforming Mars and they could pass time colonizing the red planet a distraction that went so well Corbett says board games are his “current fix for the rush of endorphins that says you’re good at something,” and now he’s clearing space in a house already full with voluminous collections of vinyl records, books and DVDs for games.
Ennis seems just as eager as Corbett is or appears to be since we only see him with people who are already deep into the hobby to win over others, and he’ll convert more than a few with this breezy survey of the resurgent form of recreation. Tabletop games are far more sophisticated than “Sorry!” or “Monopoly” these days; they can take Army vets to Vietnam for a strategic do over or serve as brainteasers for adults far more than kids, but still fun for the whole family.
“The Hobby” gets into all that; it delves into a more diverse array of players who are connected by their passion. Ennis visits Mitch and Starla Fitch, whose son Grant will join their games as a third and have become YouTube stars with their show “Our Family Plays Games.” He finds people like Elizabeth Hargrave who found unexpected success as a game designer with the scientifically sound “Wingspan” after being a public policy expert Candice Harris (who came to design games herself after developing one of the premier databases for them) and Tom Vasel (who reviews games and enjoys, in his words, a “cool level of fame” when he is recognized nowhere but at game tournaments where everyone can recognize him from his colorful fedoras).
“The Hobby” could stand to be a bit more like its characters, who all seem less invested in the traditional ideas around winning. The movie is largely structured around the attempts of a burgeoning game designer named John Hague to launch a new board game with a crowdsourcing campaign and a trip to the First World Series of Board Games in Las Vegas (where, among others, Corbett is lured by a $25,000 purse), but it never quite gets that storyline to generate much tension which is fine, since scenes of actual gameplay would require more information about what’s going on than Ennis is probably wise to go too deep into. It also resists getting into the nitty gritty of how Hague’s game actually improves as he tests it out, but does offer a nice skeleton for other game developers such as Eric Lang to discuss what makes a good game for them.
But “The Hobby” fares much better at introducing various characters from the start; a historian from England not interested in modern games, people who cannot get enough of them and whose passion dominates this movie, though they may seem like familiar plot points it does make us think about what games are for when everybody is taking away something else. In a world where the pieces have long been sold separately, they fit together nicely.
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