Really, Really Good...But Coulda Been Great

Rating: 8/10 (6 June 2005)

"Cinderella Man" is a really, really good movie that will work flawlessly for many viewers.
It's just short of being a great film, though.
"Cinderella Man" tells a true and remarkable story, and it tells it well. It aims for tears and cheers and it earns both.
Russel Crowe, as Depression-era boxer James Braddock, is his usual charismatic, handsome, masculine presence, and a fine actor. There isn't anyone else like him out there among English-speaking American / British / Aussie / Kiwi actors. He alone is worth the price of admission.
Paul Giamatti, as fight manager Joe Gould, is brilliant, as one would expect.
Craig Bierko, as a swaggering, sexily satanic Max Baer, is as scary and fun to watch as Darth Vader was in the first "Star Wars." Director Ron Howard seems to be trying to film fights in a whole new way, trying to top films like Martin Scorcese's "Raging Bull." He does a really good job.
So, what's not to like in a movie this good?
* Women. This movie caters to its male viewers. That's not a bad thing, but it made this female viewer waiting for a depth that the movie could not deliver.
The film makes clear that Russel Crowe / James Braddock, single-handedly carries the whole world on his shoulders. He sacrifices his breakfast so that his daughter may eat. He humiliates himself in front of his former peers so he can pay the electric bill. Etc.
How did his wife Mae, Renee Zellweger, spend the Depression? Whining, nagging, and otherwise doing not much of anything.
She mentions in passing that she takes in sewing, but this throwaway comment is easily missed, and gives Mae no life.
Zellweger is a Kewpie Doll here trying to express the gravitas of a wife and mother. She fails. She comes across as grating; her dark helmet-style hair emphasizes her lack of appeal.
My teeth were on edge throughout her scenes.
Love between James and Mae is meant to be a centerpiece of the movie and Braddock's motivation; Crowe communicates his love; Zellweger never conveys that she is his worthy mate.
There's actually a scene where Mae and Mrs. Joe Gould sit down and say to each other, paraphrase, "Men do everything and we do nothing." Well, thanks for pointing that out.
That's not how the women in my family spent the Depression, but that's what the movie wants us to believe, and that failure to acknowledge women as full human beings cheats the movie.
"Cinderella Man" would have been a much better movie if it, like other boxing films, mated its male lead, through the script and through casting, with a worthy partner. Think of Eva Marie Saint opposite Marlon Brando in "On the Waterfront," Talia Shire opposite Sly Stallone in "Rocky," Lili Palmer opposite John Garfield in "Body and Soul."
* Murky Cinematography. People living a long time ago looked as crisp and clear to each other as we do today; they didn't look like antique, stained, sepia photographs. Howard tries to make the movie look "old" and this just makes it look murky.
* More background. "Seabiscuit" erred on the other side, adding too much expository prose about the history of the Depression. "Cinderella Man" didn't tell us enough. In one scene, Braddock is a wealthy man, a home-owner, with his own driver. In the next, he is living in an unheated hovel.
I know that this is a historical reality, and yet the movie never made me believe it.
There is a character, Mike, who seems to be a bit of an anarchist who apparently dies in a Hooverville, but this is never made clear or interesting, which is too bad.
One final note: boxing matches make up a lot of the running time of this movie. If you are the type who needs to look away when two characters on screen are pummeling each other into bloody wads of flesh, you may end up not seeing a lot of this movie.