A Brief Review of ‘The Leonard Maltin Game’

King of Movies: The Leonard Maltin Game

Witty banter is the soul of this Mondo game that ultimately has little to do with movies and more to do with imagination. Come for the idea of cinephilia, stay for realizing that being a cinephile has nothing to do with winning this game.

That’s my Maltin-esque summation of King of Movies: The Leonard Maltin Game. As a tabletop gamer who really loved Mondo’s earlier post-apocalyptic VHS battle game Video Vortex, and as a film critic who has a fondness for the work of Leonard Maltin, I was ready for King of Movies from the minute I heard about it. Neither game necessitates an encyclopedic or even enthusiastic knowledge of movies, although certainly both benefit from a love of cinema.

The unifying thread of these games is the hidden undercurrent of cinema. In Video Vortex — which shares a name with with Mondo parent company Alamo Drafthouse’s series of “ultra-obscure, ultra-bizarre movies from the fringes of the universe” — players battle in a wasteland battleground of what I’ll call cinema-punk, that particular school of cinephilia which values, well, the “ultra-obscure and ultra-bizarre” and in which VHS and all things low-res are king. In King of Movies, viewers play the role of both Maltin, reviewing the otherwise lost and forgettable corners of cinema, and readers perusing Maltin’s legendary movie guides. In each case, players engage less with cinema itself than with the processes by which film cultures develop and thrive.

An essay by Zack Carlson in the game’s accompanying booklet calls Leonard Maltin “the physical incarnation of the unbridled joy of movies.” This is exceptionally true; unlike critics known for highbrow caustic takedowns or dense theoretical ramblings, Maltin, the Bob Ross of cinema, celebrates movies for movies’ sake. Just watch. Carlson also compares Maltin, again very aptly, to Mr. Rogers: “There’s an innocence and sincerity and intelligence in him that humans respond to, that we love”. Fittingly, compared to movie trivia games, King of Movies rewards engagement, passion, and creativity, not memorization.

I played King of Movies earlier tonight on the back porch with my roommate and a third friend (large-scale game nights, like large-scale movie nights, are not exactly a thing during COVID), neither of whom are particularly cinephiles. The fun of the game is such that it didn’t seem to matter. Like most bluffing games, King of Movies is an excuse to combine words and ideas in unique ways, and like most party games, the fun is in the act, not the end result. If Card Against Humanity was nothing but hand-written cards responding to computer-generated phrases, it might approach something like King of Movies.

Movies ranging from Jaws to Die Hard to Back to the Future have board game adaptations now (I did acquire the incredibly gorgeous Mondo game Infection at Outpost 13, based on The Thing, but with COVID raging I have yet to muster the required number of people to play it). It’s a bit silly, if you ask me. But Mondo, in its infinite wisdom, chose to adapt Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, and I’m so very glad they did. Movies are for everyone, not just ivory tower academics or encyclopedic hipster cinephiles, and this game, like Maltin himself, understands that.

Given the specificity of its theme and subject, I doubt this game will find a home on many non-cinephile shelves, but that’s okay. King of Movies will, I’m sure, have many a welcome home next to Danny Peary’s Cult Movies, David Thomson’s New Biographical Dictionary of Film, or, yes, Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide.