Based on a true story that does ring true

Rating: 8/10 (19 March 2017)

My past experience with movies based on a true story, is such that I usually stay away from the lot. Hollywood's approach to the truth is all too possessive and commercial, at least as far as I'm concerned. But this story made me curious so I checked its page on IMDb, and found here the horrible goof of making the Mercury spacecraft too spacious, I went in deeper, and found a very long list of even less significant facts, I was actually expecting to find that the color of the NASA employees shoelaces was all wrong, I really developed a distaste to the goofs section of this site. But I kept on reading, moving into the trivia section of the page where I learned that colors were used to set the mood of the film, using cold neon colors for the NASA spaces and warm colors for the personal office of Al Harrison and the ladies' houses. That really caught me by surprise. Next thing they'll tell me night scenes were set in darkness while daytime scenes used actual daylight. As a rule this section is more illuminating than the goofs section but, by now I was convinced that when IMDb dwells on such details the movie might be truer than most.
So here goes: this film does have a truthful feeling to it, the actors and actresses justify the ensemble award they got from SAG, they are all super. The leading three ladies do get more opportunities to shine, especially so Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer, who get most of the screen time, but this is definitely an entire cast working together. Apart from this fact, the movie uses a lean approach that suits movies based on a true story - No fancy CGI or camera angles just plain good old story telling. No fireworks are needed when your basic story works so well. I do agree with the reviewers stating that this is a feelgood movie, it is. But it's also a good movie and the two together work just fine.