{"id":801137,"date":"2026-10-13T10:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T10:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801137\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T10:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T10:22:09","slug":"its-my-time-review-michelle-yeoh-excels-in-rocky-style-quest-to-be-rubiks-cube-champ-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/801137\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s My Time review \u2013 Michelle Yeoh excels in Rocky-style quest to be Rubik\u2019s Cube champ | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not quite up there with Leonardo DiCaprio eating raw bison liver<\/a> to get into character, but Michelle Yeoh reportedly spent two years learning the Rubik\u2019s Cube<\/a> to prepare for this Chinese drama in which she plays a real-life former maths teacher who became a champion in retirement. The true story is stretched and squeezed here, fictionalised to fit sports-movie formula; it ends up being so-so entertaining and funny in places, but disappointingly predictable. The biggest surprise is that cubing is so popular it has its own world championship.<\/p>\n

Still, Yeoh gives a superb, spiky performance as blunt, foul-tempered Zhao Yanhong; following a stroke, Zhao is living in a nursing home where she is the resident badass, assaulting her robot care companion and making illicit trips to the off-licence. She discovers her natural talent for the Rubik\u2019s Cube when a washed-up ex-champion called Wu Youwei (Haoran Liu) comes to the nursing home to give a tutorial. What follows is a classic sports-film structure, with qualifying heats and Zhao training day and night, lifting weights and pounding the city streets. (Yes, running is de rigueur in a Rubik\u2019s Cube movie; physical strength is Zhao\u2019s weak spot says Wu, who agrees to be her coach.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yeoh is enjoyably irascible as Zhao, who goes viral after thrashing a kid in her first competition. Her online fans call her \u201cGrandma Zhao\u201d and the film gently chips away at stereotypes of the older generation; fans assume Zhao is a cuddly elder, while younger cubers underestimate her skill and stamina. Yeoh brings intelligence to the role, but it\u2019s odd that after making Zhao so testy and short-tempered, the film is all soft edges with a squishy centre. Next, can we expect a biopic of the six-year-old Chinese girl who recently set a Rubik\u2019s Cube world record<\/a>, solving it in just over four seconds?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s My Time is in UK cinemas from 16 October<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not quite up there with Leonardo DiCaprio eating raw bison liver to get into character, but Michelle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-801137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}