If there's one thing film fans love more than movies itself, it's movie trivia. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) declares to have brought the ultimate movie trivia game to the mobile world with the TCM Movie Trivia app. Available for smart phones, and tablets on the Apple iTunes website, the truly beautifully designed app (it is really pretty to look at) is free to download and play, with in-app purchases and rewards available to unlock more quiz packs. Which is nice, but how does it stack up as a trivia game in general? For the most part very well, but I do have a few nits to pick.
Whether you’re a huge classic film fan or a burgeoning cinephile, with the TCM Movie Trivia App you can test your classic film knowledge and learn more about your favorites by perusing through literally hundreds of fun and challenging questions about classic movies, actors and actresses. The questions do a good job of covering a wide variety of genres and topics, including Pop Culture Cinema, Musicals & Romance, Tough Guys and Behind the Camera. The format of question presentation is varied, including multiple-choice, image recognition, image sequencing, mix-and-match, fill-in-the-blank and more, which does keep the game fresh and interesting.
However, the success of these presentations really relies upon the size of your screen. Sometimes you just can’t see well enough with a smart phone to identify even the most famous of faces because of the diminished effect a full body pose has when shown on a tiny interface. Someone was either not thinking that one through, or simply playing dirty pool in order to keep a high level of challenge for the truly geeky movie trivia nerd. Love, love, love this app, but wish I could see it better. The answer? Gotta have a pad or reader to really get all you can out of this app.