Incredible Story, Blase Film

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2017)

Three black women, who happened to be good friends, played pivotal roles in America's first manned-trip to outer space. It's a piece of American history that has been all but completely missing from our collective conscience. Their incredible story deserves to be told as an inspirational message of intuitiveness and perseverance, one that will touch women, minorities & anyone else with a soul. If only the filmmakers were as courageous and smart as these trailblazing women. Hidden Figures gets by solely on its being based in reality; otherwise, it's predictable biopic filmmaking with no faith in its story or audience to connect without pandering. It's far from a complete disaster. It presents some interesting parallels between science and racial inequality, specifically how progress in each can look one way in the numbers & facts but then a completely different way in action. The performances are good, with Monae and Ali specifically standing out, continuing their breakout years after their gentle turns in (the much superior) Moonlight. Individual scenes work in a vacuum, specifically a particularly sweet engagement dinner. Unfortunately, it's all covered in unbearably corny, Blindside-like dialogue and on-the-nose emotional beats. Above all, the music is incessant and awful. A manipulative hodge-podge of modern pop, classic soul, and generically emotional scoring, it's begging us to find the film charming. At times it is, like a late 20th-century Oscar nominee. Mostly though, its pandering emotions and generic filmmaking can't allow it to soar to the heights it should. Hidden Figures isn't a "bad" film; it's just a blasé film about a decidedly un-blasé story.