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Seabiscuit
(Reviewed July 24, 2003)
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Okay but wildly overrated (and regrettably fictionalized) story about the Depression-era racehorse Seabiscuit (and, as they say, the people who loved him). Audiences will be corralled into theaters by all of the Oscar hype some critics are shoveling, but this
over-earnest flick probably won't even make my top ten of the year. There's an overriding fakeness here, a too-thick coat of schmaltz, a calculatedness that cloys. "Seabiscuit" is not as twinkly and cornball
as "The Legend of Bagger Vance," but it's sort of in the same league. A better comparison would be to "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" (another movie that starred Jeff Bridges, coincidentally): All of the
elements of a good, true story are there, but the end result is flat and disappointing.
The best thing about the movie is Chris ("Adaptation," "American Beauty") Cooper's performance as Seabiscuit's trainer. Cooper is so completely convincing in the role that he makes everyone
else in the cast look like a high-school drama student. Damn, this guy is good.
The horse races are well shot, but there's definitely something missing from the off-the-track scenes. I didn't get the feeling that anybody but Cooper was playing a real person with any depth. Bill
Macy is decent as a comic-relief track announcer, but Jeff Bridges (as Seabiscuit's owner) and Tobey Maguire (as jockey Red Pollard) don't dig deep enough to seem real. And strange as it seems for a
two-hour-plus movie, it feels as if too many real events have been left out of the story. Honestly, I would have preferred to see a documentary about these events, instead of this Hollywood-ed version.
I was about to say that this might be a good movie choice for young girls who like horsies, but the fighting and whorehouse scenes at the beginning make that an iffy recommendation. (It's very
strange that those scenes are included in a movie that makes no mention of other grown-up vices, such as track gambling or the real-life Red Pollard's problems with alcohol.)
It's too bad there are so few "real" movies out there that this ends up being the winner by default. Go see the dark-horse contenders "Swimming Pool" or "Lost in Translation" instead, if you are looking for better grown-up fare.
Back Row Grade: C-
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