An Example Of The Worst Type Of Hollywood Reimagining

Rating: Null/10 (12 April 2013)

The full review of this can be found on slashcomment:
Jackie Robinson's journey from the buses of Negro league baseball to becoming the first black player to play in the all-white Major Leagues is a story on much the same level as that of Neil Armstrong's one giant leap for mankind 22 years later. His is a story filled to the brim with challenges, intrigue, drama, thrills and — ironically — many shades of gray. It's a story that deserves an honest, in-depth analysis and celebration. 42 is not that story.
I would not have been at all surprised to learn that this disgrace found its way out of a time capsule from the early 1970′s. It brings back all the bad elements of what a Disney film of that era tried to pass off as entertainment. This is neither the 1970′s nor a Disney film. Every character's reduced to fundamental caricature magnifying stereotype upon stereotype. History rides in the back of the bus here.
The characters, as presented, are paper-thin. You know every line before it's spoken. At a key game one sunny afternoon Robinson's radiant wife suddenly turns and announces that she's oddly nauseous. I have little doubt the patrons in the next theater knew she was pregnant before she did.
The acting is fine but the casting is a mess. Harrison Ford embodies famed Dodgers owner Branch Rickey. He does a commendable job and it's almost hard to believe it's him but it's so unlike anything he's done before that you can't stop thinking, "Wow, that's really Harrison Ford in there." It's a distraction. The Jackie Robinson we experience is played admirably by TV vet Chadwick Boseman. Unfortunately his body type is entirely wrong and diminutive by comparison to the real man. Was that an oversight or just an over slight? Relative newcomer Nicole Beharie fares best of all as Jackie's wife Rachel but has to deal with the shackles of being asked to play a mannequin. Her real life counterpart was a wonderfully normal, down-to-earth woman with real relationship challenges. Here she's just the perfect angelic wife content to live forever without any needs of her own.
I knew this film was doomed the moment I read the early subtitle, "Based on a true story". Robinson's story requires no softening or dramatic plot embellishments and yet this script does so with a reckless abandon that's simply unfathomable. It is, dare I say, a complete whitewashing that comes off like a reinvention of events as told by a partially repentant bigot. I don't believe that was Helgeland's intention or perspective but I can't ignore the feelings.