Hatley High

Hatley High is a 2003 independent comedy film directed by Phil Price and written by Myles Hainsworth. It was shown at various film festivals from September 2003 to 2005 including the San Diego Film Festival and the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Plot Tommy Linklater is an 18-year-old whose magic is often minor (re-directing croquet balls, making cards appear in closed purses, etc.) but is always genuine since he actually does the impossible. He soon learns that his hobby for playing chess while his mother was alive is another gift that she left him. His father, Herman Linklater, is a physicist who believes that all the universes mysteries will eventually be explained away. Tommy's mother and Herman's wife, Melanie, has died and left them a house in a small lakeside town, North Hatley, that they did not know she owned. They decide to move there for a year so that Herman can finish his book on cosmology. Once they arrive, the Linklaters discover that Melanie was something of a local legend. She left North Hatley after throwing a game against the town's greatest chess rivals, the Russians. The town was forced to realize their mistakes by pushing her too hard to win and thus undermining the soul of the game. Her pictures and trophies are everywhere in the small town. Tommy attends Hatley High, whose main claim to fame is the Knights, an internationally ranked chess team. He befriends a basketball prodigy, Julius, whose secret passion is surfing, as well as Trevor and Darryl, two charming and ambitious guys who call themselves the Syndicate. He also meets and ends up going out with Hyacinthe Marquez, the beautiful and witty cheerleader who does cartwheels as effortlessly as she quotes Oscar Wilde. Herman, meanwhile, is being pestered by the town priest, Lorne Granger, who is a physics buff who actually and casually talks to God. Herman is very uncomfortable around priests but is eventually won over by Lorne's enthusiasm for physics. Herman undergoes a sort of epiphany when Lorne provides him with an equation that is not supposed to exist. The equation enables him to finish his book, but he is forced to confront the possibility that he not living in a clockwork universe after all.