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A far cry from the greatness of Jackie Robinson, ’42’ underwhelms

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By Price Zimmer ’14 | Arts & Entertainment Editor

A movie that has a phenomenal basis, the story of the man who breaks baseball’s color barrier, “42” mightily disappoints. While not a bad film, the result ends up being closer to a great made-for-TV movie and less of a cinematic experience the source material offers.

Jackie Robinson, who wore the titular number “42” jersey, broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947, at a time when baseball was near its most popular. He was from Georgia, he played second base for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Chadwick Boseman does a decent job as the young Robinson, who is portrayed as a fiercely driven, fire-cracker of a man. Boseman does an admirable job filling in the spiked shoes of one of America’s biggest heroes; he handles the poor script well, though he never came across as truly believable.

The bold, nearly incomprehensible Branch Rickey is played by Harrison Ford. Ford too seemed like he was held back a bit by the poor writing, though he is fun to watch and offers plenty of one-liners for the audience. The rest of the cast is just OK, they are not really all that memorable but do a decent enough job.

It is pretty clear that one of the weakest elements of the movie is the script, almost from the start it paints Robinson and company as nearly mythical figures, which sells short the achievement these men made. The dialogue can be good, but the one-dimensional characters and essentially no character development weigh this movie down. This is surprising because writer/director Brian Helgland worked on L.A. Confidential, of the most smartly made movies of the last two decades, and this is a far weaker script and movie than the 1997 classic.

Another problem the movie suffers from is the set design, normally this is not an issue in movies, however, the movie never feels like the events take place in the real world. There simply is no realistic quality; everything is very neat – like a museum set, nothing looks tattered or worn or lived in.

Perhaps this relates to a larger problem that movie never really feels authentic, much of what is shown is high quality, but when taken together the movie comes more of a nostalgic dream than a post-war America in the midst of the Jim Crow era. While there are plenty of instances of racism, none of them ever come together to ever draw the audience back in time.

One saving grace is the frequent humor, often given by Ford’s Rickey. It lightens the mood to an often emotionally burdensome movie and is frequent enough to make a significant impact on the audience. While it is not the main draw, it is one area that really stands out.

Overall, this is movie is worth the price of admission. It is not nearly as good as it could have been, this movie is more unsuccessful than bad in any particular aspect. Harrison Ford and some funny one-liners save this movie, a “C-”.

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