Sunday 28 April 2013

42 Review

It's no secret that I don't like Harrison Ford.  He's one of the most over rated actors in Hollywood.  Going into this one, you got the feeling that his portrayal of Branch Rickey as a crusader for human rights was supposed to be an Oscar bid.  If it was, he failed miserably.  Everything about the character is overplayed.  The gravelly voice and forced delivery comes off so cheesy as to be completely unbelievable.

And that's a shame because, almost everything else about this movie is actually very good.  The rest of the acting performances are quite strong (with the exception of the kids but they're too young to be great actors).  I was especially impressed with Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson.  Everything about his performance was convincing.  it would have been easy to try and make the character bigger than the movie given the subject matter. but it was restrained just enough to be able to tell the story well.  I also like John C McGinley as the radio announcer.  His old-timey sayings and voice gave the right feel to baseball scenes that were well shot and thought out.  it really felt like I was watching a game from 70 years ago.

Finally, I liked that the movie didn't think it was bigger than it actually was.  In an era of ultra political correctness, it is easy to try and make a story like this bigger than it really is.  Don't get me wrong.  What Jackie Robinson did was groundbreaking and unbelievably important for human rights and the game of baseball.  I don't want to take away from that.  But in movies like this, they often put the characters on these soap boxes and have them make these grand speeches about how what they are doing is so important.  In 42. they addressed the overall good of what they were doing without being overly preachy.  It stayed grounded in a baseball movie and balanced it very well.

See it.  Ford is difficult to watch but the rest is done just fine.

1 comment:

  1. Good review Chupie. This actually ended up being an enjoyable movie that a family can go see and I think that if you're a fan of baseball, then it wouldn't hurt to check out this movie.

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