The concept is irresistible: Spreadsheet Champions introduces viewers to the world of elite Excel users, following six students representing their countries at the 2023 Microsoft Office Specialist World Championship in Florida.
Much like The King of Kong or even sports docs like The Deepest Breath, Spreadsheet Champions examines people who pursue excellence in a highly specific, slightly inane pursuit. But while those aforementioned documentaries have the advantage of being visually captivating and easy for anyone to relate to, director Kristina Kraskov has a slightly steeper hill to climb here: watching someone work on an Excel spreadsheet is not only boring, it's also difficult for most people to even understand what they're actually doing, when all laypeople use spreadsheets for is making columns of numbers and maybe using a sum formula.
Kraskov barely even tries to explain what's going on in these kids' spreadsheets, and, aside from a slightly boring montage during the climactic scene, the film spends very little time with its subjects' faces buried in their laptops. Instead, Kraskov wisely spends most of the runtime with the kids, who respectively hail from Australia, Cameroon, Greece, Guatemala, the US and Vietnam.
These kids provide all of the film's standout moments — like the stink face one kid makes at his orange juice when he's too nervous to eat breakfast, or the off-hand way another teen tells his dad about the competition results. Trips to their homelands are fascinating glimpses into the very different circumstances they hail from.
Spreadsheet Champions isn't a perfect doc. There are a few too many supporting characters for a film with a sub-90-minute runtime, and, without giving too much away, Kraskov has some bad luck in regards to how her subjects fare in the competition, making the ending feel like an anticlimax rather than a classic "underdog sports movie" payoff.
Still, Spreadsheet Champions makes good on the quirkiness of its promise, finding the formula to success by letting its unique subjects shine.