“Life of a King” is a warm and likable “make a difference” melodrama about an ex-con who teaches inner city kids about how chess can change your life.

Like “The Butler,” it’s a reminder that no, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Oscar was no fluke, even if he’s had precious few roles over the decades to justify that opinion.

Gooding is Eugene Brown, who takes the advice of the fellow inmate, The Chess Man (Dennis Haysbert) to heart as he’s taking his leave of a D.C. penal institution where he’s spent 17 years.

“Just keep your eye on the end game…Take care of the king. Everything else follows.”

It’s a message Brown passes on to the kids stuck in detention in the failure factory known as Maud Alton High School, where Brown finds a job as a janitor and finds purpose in monitoring those unruly kids in the detention hall.

Co-writer/director Jake Goldberger has turned this “true story” into an uplifting formula film with obstacles popping up, like clockwork, every so often in the script. We can’t fret too much over what Brown does to support himself once the janitor job ends, over the lack of actual chess and chess instruction that supposedly turns these kids from newbies to champs, or Brown’s abrupt transformation from ex-con who’s been “Scared Straight” into a teacher demanding that these kids “Stand and Deliver.”

Yeah, it’s like that.

But Gooding brings just enough streetwise credibility to make Brown work. The kids are distinct and believably troubled, particularly Malcolm H. Mays as a promising convert who could go good or bad, and Kevin Hendricks as a true believer student whose idealism Brown must live up to every day.

And Haysbert, in just a couple of scenes, brings a world weary gravitas to the lifer known as The Chess Man. As predictable as everything that happens between his first scene and his last may be, Haysbert sells the idea of what the game means to him and how important mastering it should be to these kids.

“Only my mind gets out” of prison, he confesses, “every time I open a board.”

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug content and brief violent images – all involving teens

Cast: Cuba Gooding Jr., Malcolm H. Mays, LisaGay Hamilton, Dennis Haysbert, Rachae Thomas, Richard T. Jones

Credits: Directed by Jake Goldberger, written by Jake Goldberger, David Scott, Dan Wetzel. A Millennium Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:41