Review

I expected this to be a story about the beloved game of Tetris – one I spent many hours playing on a GameBoy – but it was about the incredibly boring topic of intellectual property rights.

It follows the rather bland topic of contractual agreements, buying (or thinking you've bought) rights and selling them to third parties and then onto the actual developers. Yawn. It was interesting to see behind the “Iron Curtain”; the governmental control, poverty and philosophy of the populous, showing how the general public was no different to you and me – which is kind of obvious, to be honest.

Henk – our “hero” in this story of intellectual property rights – literally bets his house on securing the worldwide rights to Tetris and begins a game of cat-and-mouse between him, other interested parties and the controlling USSR government. It's a story of capitalism and communism and not about Tetris.

There are many 8-bit inspired effects, including location settings and (overused) plane animations that are reminiscent of the Indiana Jones travel transitions. These flourishes even bleed into an action scene towards the end, in a strange novel one-off way.

Overall the movie is fine. Aside from the cartoonish characters, there are some nice moments between friends and a shared future. It's all well acted and shot, just that the story didn't align with my expectation.