The life story of Jackie Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.

Jackie Robinson biopic blah blah blah

The question is, will it be about Robinson or about Rickey?

See Cry Freedom if you wonder what I'm talking about.

Well let's see, Rickey will be played by screen legend Harrison Ford and Robinson will be played by some unknown dude named Chadwick Boseman. I'm willing to bet we'll get a good deal of screen time aimed at Rickey...

Damn! I was hoping this was going to be a movie about what is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Beat me to it.

What is the meaning, exactly, of this seemingly idiotic response?

Poster



Trailer

<embed src="http://latinoreview.springboardplatform.com/mediaplayer/springboard/youtube/ltrv001/nCduxL8ELwQ/" name="ltrv001_cf7f5d9c4434b9a4ee46e5a9a1ec64db" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" height="490" width="870">

I doubt it could be any better than The Jackie Robinson Story which was made during Robinson's lifetime and had his support at both the scripting and acting level. This is pretty much on the same level as trying to remake Casablanca.

You spend some time in Sports Talk, no?

Trailer looks interesting but it seems to confirm my fears that the film will only focus on Robinson's playing career.

I'm not sure if the hip-hop soundtrack is 100% accurate for the time period.

Maybe he's just not interested in a Jackie Robinson movie.

This opened this weekend. Anyone seeing it or does no one in Movie Talk care about sports movies?

I may see it tomorrow or Tuesday. I've always been interested in seeing a biopic about Robinson.

I saw it on Friday night and I thought it was good. It mostly focused on his life as a player and didnI go into a ton of his personal life. I should also admit I don't know a ton about him other than some basic stuff but the film seemed well done. The guy who played him was good in my opinion as was Harrison Ford. Actually I thought it was one of Ford's best performances in a long time.

It was a decent film for folks who know nothing about Robinson. It was an infuriating film for those of us who know that Robinson was a far more interesting person and led a far more interesting life than the script portrayed. If the film had covered more than 3 years of his life it could have been great, as it is, the film is ok.

While overall, a satisfying telling of the journey of Jackie Robinson's early years in Major League Baseball in the 1940s after WWII, "42" reaches for verbal barbs and showcases sheer segregational attitudes and situations on the level of "The Passion of the Christ" sometimes, rendering it very uncomfortable viewing, but necessary to shine the light of racial inequity in the the game of baseball (and life in general in that era), and how the tides have changed in stark comparison to the racial landscape of MLB today, all due to the intestinal fortitude of Jackie Robinson to remain on the high road, and to the vision of Branch Rickey to press the issue and overcome decades, if not centuries of prejudice and racial injustice.

I give it 3 stars, or a grade of B.

P.S. Be forewarned, lots of racial epithets get spewed and racial inequities displayed to show the conditions that Jackie Robinson played in at the time.

I saw it and thought it was great. Ford's best on-screen performance since THE FUGITIVE, in my opinion...I think he deserves an Oscar nod for it, but too many will probably see it as a preachy, grumbling, cartoonish performance (not realizing that's EXACTLY the way Branch Rickey talked).

BTW, Harrison throws like a girl.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/RXL_W3mIJbY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

^ embarrassing. Meanwhile a blind kid throws a strike

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Lv2xtXSMup0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Question: Didn't Spike Lee want to direct the Jackie Robinson story for years? I take it that plan completely fell through. Was he attached to this project at any time?

Yep, he's friends with Jackie's widow and has been trying for years to get a Robinson movie made...not sure why it never transpired. I'm assuming Spike would have covered his whole life rather than just a few years, and it might have made for a better movie, but I'm not sure it would have been as mainstream as 42 currently is.

That gives me flashbacks about high school.

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com...inson-film.php

42: JACKIE AT THE BAT
by Ethan Alter April 12, 2013 8:22 AM

It's not fair to spend an entire movie comparing it to another film on the same subject that was never actually made. But as I sat there watching the new Jackie Robinson biopic 42, I couldn't help measuring it against the version of the Robinson story that Spike Lee and Denzel Washington spent years trying to get off the ground before they were relieved by writer/director Brian Helgeland. Knowing Lee's penchant for provocation, his Jackie Robinson movie almost certainly would have been more confrontational -- and less commercial -- than the studio funding it would have liked. And, to be honest, there's no guarantee that it would have succeeded artistically; after all, as terrific a talent as Lee is, his stats are inconsistent with big wins like Do the Right Thing and He Got Game sitting alongside such heartbreaking losses as She Hate Me and Summer of Sam. But, win or lose, Lee's 42 would almost certainly have been more interesting than Helgeland's 42, which takes a crucial piece of sports and social history and treats it with kid gloves, substituting Hollywood gloss for real-world grit.

In Helgeland's defense, this approach isn't entirely without merit. After all, as Robinson and his remarkable achievements as major league baseball's first African-American player fade steadily into the distant past -- consigned to history books and museum exhibits -- a handsomely-mounted, studio-backed mainstream movie has the power to bring his story (or, at least, the broad strokes of it) back to vibrant life, particularly for younger viewers who may only recognize the name "Jackie Robinson" from their Social Studies textbooks. And 42, which spans a roughly two-year period from 1946 to 1948, has absolutely been made with young viewers in mind. Although the movie is rated PG-13, it has very little in the way of objectionable content: there's no profanity (apart from, obviously, a certain N-word), no gruesome violence and absolutely no sex. Even the horrific racism that Robinson (played here by Chadwick Boseman) endured as the first black ballplayer to crack the sport's color barrier is depicted in a relatively restrained manner. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a whitewashing of history, since kids will absolutely come away from the movie understanding just how painful and ugly Robinson's treatment was. At the same time, though, it's kind of strange that Quentin Tarantino's hyper-stylized, Spaghetti Westernized depiction of racism in Django Unchained comes off as feeling more authentic than much of what we see in 42.

Whether it was intentional or not, 42 functions as the third installment in a series of inspirational triumph-in-the-face-of racism true life sports films that includes 2006's Glory Road and 2008's The Express, which took place in the world of college basketball and college football respectively. Helgeland's film isn't significantly better or worse than either of those PG-rated efforts, which also sought to dramatize history in a way that appeals to the family demographic. The movie's best attribute is Boseman, who does a fine job inhabiting a version of Robinson who has been written to more closely resemble Superman than an ordinary man. The trap that most biopics (including 42) fall into is that the central figure is often the least dynamic character in the film, as the filmmakers become so dazzled and/or intimidated by the legend that they forget to get at the man or woman behind it. So it goes with Helgeland's Robinson, who stoically endures the slings and arrows cast at him by ignorant yahoos, only allowing the noble facade to break in a handful of obligatory private moments. And while that image of Jackie Robinson is rooted in fact -- as the script helpfully exposits for the audience, he had to remain stoic lest the press and public write him off as a hothead unfit to play a "gentleman's" game -- the disappointing thing about 42 is that it never digs much deeper than his history book persona, despite having a leading man who seems willing and eager to explore the less well-known (and, perhaps, less-admirable) aspects of Robinson's personality. Given the choice between printing the facts and the legend, it goes with the legend.

42 further ups its mythical quotient by structuring itself like a superhero origin story, with the first half given over to depicting Robinson's humble beginnings in the Negro Leagues, before he's tapped by Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford, whose performance begins closer to parody before settling down into his typical late-career mediocrity) to join the Dodgers-operated Montreal Royals, with the intention of bringing him to Brooklyn in time for Opening Day, 1947. Then at almost precisely the halfway point, he acquires the uniform that bears the titular number (which Helgeland's camera films with the kind of reverence afforded Superman's iconic S-shield) and begins the great battle against his primary nemesis, Major Prejudice -- embodied here by a gaggle of racist players, managers (most notably Alan Tudyk as a loudmouth redneck coaching for the Phillies) and epithet-shouting spectators. A sports movie novice, Helgeland does a competent, but unexceptional job with the on-field baseball action; most of the big plays are filmed in tight close-up (the better to hide the actors' dubious athleticism) and the wider shots have some noticeable digital tweaks, up to and including a CGI-ball. Superficialities aside, I can't deny that I often found myself cheering on Boseman-as-Robinson and was genuinely touched by the displays of camaraderie that his teammates eventually afforded him. (The Yankee cap-sporting kid sitting one row over from me was vocally moved by those scenes as well, so let it not be said that the movie doesn't play to its target audience.) But I still can't help but feel that Spike Lee would have been better equipped to give us the rousing, yet also painfully honest cinematic tribute that Jackie Robinson deserves.

I thought it was all right. Seems like a by the numbers biopic.