Solid, if not out of the world (except literally) entertainment

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2017)

Hidden Figures is a movie about three NASA workers, mathematical prodigies, who play vital roles in different ways in the American space program. I don't know enough about the specific history of NASA to comment on that point, but the exposition was integrated well. They are all African American women, and they face all the bigotries that one would expect in the mostly intolerant environment of Virginia in the 1960s. They all start as "computers" to perform mathematics manually but soon move into roles ranging from computing orbital mechanics to programming their technological replacements.
Hidden Figures tries to do a lot, and it does much of it well. It is, at times, a touching movie that pulls on the heart-strings. Yet despite its grand ambitions, I do not think that it is a great movie. Its message, while noble, is made ham-fistedly. Jim Parsons as villain was a nice touch, and the three main actors did a marvelous job. Taraji Henson did a particularly striking job. However, the film's ambitions of covering three different character arcs perhaps weakened its execution of all of them. John Glenn's character in particular seems more like 21st century wish-fulfillment than a realistic take on a character, and the physical smashing of the segregated bathroom signs was also a bit too obvious a metaphor.
It is not a bad movie, and it is certainly an uplifting one, if not exactly a great one.