Inspiring and Uplifting

Rating: 8/10 (26 December 2016)

Saw this on Christmas Day at a sold-out theater in Hollywood. This movie was a terrific crowd-pleaser. The audience laughed, shook their heads at times, and clapped when the protagonists stood up for themselves or someone else stood up for them. The main story concerns the small victories that the three leads have working at NASA as black females but its told within the context of the race to get a man in space, which is gripping and genuinely entertaining in its own right. There's humor, a little bit of romance, and feel- good moments that should speak to any person who's ever been overlooked or under-appreciated, especially within a massive organization.
I have no idea how much of this is true and what has been padded for dramatic purposes. But, I don't agree with the naysayers who accuse this movie of re-writing history. Of the three leads, one's victory is getting a judge to let her attend a segregated school so she can get the classes she needs to be an engineer; another remains in the clerical pool for the most part but sees the value in learning FORTRAN to avoid redundancy and is finally promoted to supervisor and earns the right to be respected (shown by being addressed as Mrs. Vaughn and not by her first name); the main lead performs calculations that are critical to one aspect of a space flight. The ladies are shown as contributing to a broad, scientific endeavor, which in no way lessens the contributions of other players.