O/T: Saw "42" tonight and loved it...
 

I just came home after a classic Friday night dinner-and-a-movie with my wife. We went to see "42" and had a great time. The theater was packed, it was a family atmosphere, and there were dozens of kids wearing their baseball/softball uniform jerseys. The whole crowd was clapping and cheering a few times when the characters who played Jackie Robinson and others involved in this story came through...awesome experience.

Without trying to turn this thread into a spoiler for those who haven't seen it, I wanted to give the board members here a gentle nudge towards their local theater to go and see, "42."

Additionally, I invite everyone to give their vote on how they liked the film.

Best Regards,

Eric

+1

I also loved it!

I plan to try to get a small group together to watch!!!

Thanks for weighing in, Jeff.

Hope this finds you well and that your theater experience this evening was a good one.

Best,

Eric

Ed,

Wish I was on the West Coast to join your group.

Enjoy the film.

Best,

Eric

The movie was everything I was hoping for and more. I've recommended it to several collector friends already.

Spread the word, my (new) friend. Baseball is back...to a whole new generation.

Best Regards,

Eric

Good movie
 

I saw it with the wife last night. Although I enjoyed the movie, I wish there was a little more emphasis on his playing days.

r/
Frank

+1 - Fantastic film.

Hey, saw it last night. Thought it was pretty good, not great. The actor that played Ben Chapman is a favorite of mine and that really distracted me. Very different character from what he usually plays.

Saw it, Loved it.
 

Like many others, I saw 42 last night, and brought two friends and even my wife, and everyone enjoyed it. One guy already asked if we could go again.

I was hoping for a little more on his playing days in the Negro Leagues, but I understand that would have been a rabbit trail from the point of the movie, which was his integration into baseball.

One question, I was left unsure of Branch Rickey - what is commonly believed to be the reason he made the decision to integrate? Was it money, love of the game, a chance to leave a lasting impression on the game, truly a desire to de-segregate, etc.? The movie made him out to be a really good guy but I don't know what the real Rickey was like.

I agree. My distraction was the play by play announcer played by John McGinley.

Though I thought Harrison Ford and the guy that played Robinson did a pretty good job, I felt the movie was a little corny at times and was very generic for the diehard baseball fan. They skipped a ton of history. Never even touched the 50's, but instead looked at only a few years of Robinson's life. I was pretty disappointed overall.

Not a bad movie to take the family to though...

I think it was ok. Was disappointed a bit in that the untold story as to what went into selecting him, the problems he and his wife faced before and during his fisrt year in the Bigs were really glossed over. That should have been more of the focus in my opinion, given how it was portrayed. Not that it was bad, just did not meet my expectations, and left me wanting more.

It's pretty amazing how they recreated the old ballparks. I'd love to hear how they did it. I recognized Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, Crosley Field. Sportsman's Park, Shibe Park and Forbes Field.

I saw an early screening of the movie and the actor that played Robinson did a Q&A afterwards. A gentleman asked him about the ball parks - and he said they were able to recreate a lot of that through CGI.

For the people who saw it. I know it's PG-13. Is it appropriate to take 8 year old boy to it? My son would like to see it but just wanted to get your thoughts. Thanks.

The N-Word is said numerous times. As far as I can remember that would have been the only reason it would have received that rating.

Thanks to all who have participated so far.

I look forward to hearing from those who caught the Saturday showing.

Best Regards,

Eric

On a side note, if you enjoyed the movie, on Bob Costa's show on MLB TV he had the whole hour interviewing, Harrison Ford, the Jackie Robinson actor and Don Newcombe. Don Newcombe had some really good stories.

Harrison Ford stole the show
 

Just got home from seeing the late viewing of 42.

Thought it was a pretty good movie.

Harrison Ford was tremendous as Branch Rickey.

Patrick

I completely agree with Patrick......Harrison Ford deserves an Award for his portrayal of Branch Rickey.

My wife and I enjoyed this movie. However, it would have been nicer if they had portrayed more of Jackie Robinson's career and life.

I experienced flashbacks to my youth seeing Crosley Field, Forbes Field, Polo Grounds, Sportsman's Park, and especially Ebbets Field.

Highly recommend seeing this movie.


TED Z

Wish I could see it. Most of the time I enjoy living in the sticks, but it is not fun that the big movie chains have destroyed all our theaters in rural America. No way I'm driving an hour both ways to get ripped off. I'll wait for the dvd.

I treated myself while the daughter was at prom last night--first a Dodgers-DBacks game downtown and then the movie. I enjoyed one much more than the other.

The movie was good to very good but not great IMO. It was aimed 99% at that year of breaking the color barrier, with only a little background and follow-up, but that's not surprising given time constraints and the message they were hammering home. And its a good message to hammer home.

I went to the 10:00 p.m show and I would say that at least 25% of the crowd was under 18, including many pre-teens. The amount and degree of the racial slurring was very noticeable, and as uncomfortable as it made me feel, I hope the younger set was even more affected by how vile it sounds.

I remember seeing "Brian's Song" when I was 12 and how much of an impact it had on my generation, at least those in my part of the world. Seeing it again much later I could tell how it was far from any cinematic masterpiece, and was often sappy. Still, the message it sent had been received long ago. With 42, I hope the younger people get the message too, even if the movie itself can be picked at by the critics.

BTW: Spoiler alert (j/k). Ostermueller was a lefty.;)

I saw it last night with my girlfriend. The theater was packed. I liked 42 a lot but I did wish it focused a little more on what Jackie thought about everything that was happening. I wanted it to be a little more from Jackie's perspective, even though it followed Jackie. Definitely should see it if you haven't.

There is a story in Ken Burns Baseball that when he was a college coach (Ohio Wesleyan?) he was checking his team into a hotel and him only black player was refused a room. Rickey said he would stay in his room and sent him ahead while he checked the team in. When he arrived to his room, the players was in tears rubbing his skin and saying "it won't come off". It haunted him for years.

Saw it tonight, great movie. Harrison Ford does a great job as Rickey.

I saw it Saturday and was happily surprised, since I was sort of skeptical going in. I had been put off by the hip hop tracks in trailers, and thought it might end up being abolutely formulaic/cliched and overdone (see "Red Tails" or similar).. especially the scenes/stories many of us know from Ken Burns' Baseball or books that could have been been ruined by overdoing- Branch Rickey's story from Ohio Weslyan, Reese in Cincy, Bragen and others' petition, etc. However, I thought it portrayed each of these moments/subplots very effectively.

I see where others are coming from, in that it may have been nice to see more of his career.. but that's an entirely different movie, probably with a lot of narration (think Seabiscuit), skipping years at a time, and probably not able to focus on the challenges he faced prior to and during that first season with the any real depth. That said, given how I know I could watch the K Burns series in one sitting if I chose to, I'd have been totally fine sitting a 7 hour epic, broken up into two 3.5 hour parts.

Overall, I'd vote very good (Already wasted my vote on "haven't seen it"), not great but how many sports movies really are "great". Usually it's the emotion and/or sentimentality we baseball lovers feel that make good to very good movies "great" in our minds. And whether great or not, the message in "42" is great, will always be relavent, and needs to be told and re-told forever.

BTW- psyched that I was finally able to pick up a nice EX- Leaf J Robinson before the movie premiered because there have been some CRAZY prices on eBay over the weekend. Over $3000 for a nice 6, nearly $3000 for a slighly lesser 6, over $1200 for a 4. Have got to think the movie's had an effect since very nice 7's were in the low to mid $2000's only a month or two ago.

There is a reason why the best movie about "Titanic" was made after anyone involved was long gone....if "42" was made 42 years from now there would be no one left to nitpick from experience.

The movie was fine, performances were almost uniformly excellent (Harrison Ford should receive Oscar consideration), it "looked good," and hit on most of the major points. The only bad thing was a pretty lame-ass musical soundtrack with stuff like "fanfare" playing during a slow-motion home run.

Actually, it's pretty much a throwback baseball movie with racism as the central theme. Serious baseball fans should see it on the big screen.

For me the highlight was the performance of "Red Barber" doing play-by-play. Great! That's MY Oscar-worthy performance.

Counterpoint.

Pride of the Yankees.

Yah,...he played a good "pirate" once...lol

I went tonight with several family members who are not baseball fans. The entire group loved it! I own just about every baseball movie ever made and this is a top 10 entry.

It reminds me of going to Cooperstown in 1989 with some of my wife's family that were not baseball fans. After watching the movie in the wonderful theater inside there was not a dry eye in the group!

Great stuff

Isn't it unfair that jackie gets all the credit and he wasn't even the first African American. Most people don't even know about Moses fleetwood walker. I think he doesn't get recognized because he didn't have a long/good career.

Not to take anything away from Moses Walker, but his brief appearance (with his brother I think, right?) didn't really lead to much if any advancement for blacks in MLB. This was in no way Walker's fault, however I think Jackie Robinson's breakthrough will always and should always receive the praise it does. What happened in 1946-1947 lead directly to the cultural landscape/racial diversity the game has seen since.

Do not believe the mention of Welday & Fleet Walker, or Bud Fowler, or Jimmy Claxton diminishes Jackie Robinson's achievements in any way. I have found that Robinson's story is often told excluding others who preceded him, while contrarily their stories cannot be told without mentioning his name. But I believe that speaks to the enormity of Robinson's career and the social impact it had on our nation.

Great movie.

Saw the movie this afternoon. I thought the movie was done & the characters that portrayed their parts did a great job. Especially the actor who played Branch Rickey. If you remember the first movie, The Jackie Robinson Story, Branch Rickey gets little credit for bringing Jackie Robinson to organized baseball. However, Branch Rickey gets more credit in this movie.

"The actor"?!? That's Han Solo man! :)

Hey, he was Bob Falfa first! :)

The guy who never got any credit was the first African-American in the American League, Larry Doby. He went through a lot of the same things Jackie went through but has always been in the shadows.

I'd second that, Doby debuted mere months after Robinson did in 1947. I'd have to think just about every player who integrated his team in those first few years had a really tough time. This however should not take anything away from Jackie Robinson and the attention his accomplishments have received... Doby and other just need to be brought into the conversation more often.

Indiana Jones!

Guess I saw a different movie than everyone else. It was not great. Way over-Hollywoodized. The true story is so amazing and dramatic, they didn't need to try to make it more dramatic. You know that scene at the end of The Natural when Roy Hobbs hits the home run into the lights and they explode and the music is playing and it's in slow motion? This movie tried to make every scene into that. It was pretty much what I expected (and feared) it would be. They did do a great job on one very emotional and true scene where Pee Wee Reese comes over to Jackie and puts his arm around him on the field in Cincinnati to show everyone in the stands "This guy is okay." Best scene in the movie, in my opinion. I really wish they'd gone into more detail about his college years, his military years, and his life after baseball. Jackie Robinson was such a complex and amazing human being. His entire life was movie-worthy. But this movie was really only about the 1947 season. If I had to sum it up I'd say this movie needed more Ken Burns and less Michael Bay.

-Ryan

Absolutely no problems with anyone disliking this or any movie.. but you've got to realize that what you want is an entirely different movie. One in which it's no longer possible to tell the story of that first year's obstacles, emotion, team dynamics, etc with the focus they did.

I think filmmaking is one of the most challenging things there is, and a filmmaker has to make a lot of tough choices.. basically infinite choices when you take into account that on each take they need to choose camera angles, lighting, set and character staging, etc. One of those difficult early choices is choosing the scope and focus of your story. The writer/director (and studio) chose to focus on that first season which is fair enough. I'd be fine sitting through a 9 hour movie about his whole life (as I'm guessing you would also:D).. one that is able to give each key moment its due, but the viewing audience would not, and that movie would never be made. If they were to try to squeeze college/military/negro league/minor league/'47-'55 series/maybe some civil rights activism/capped off by a Jesse Jackson eulogy into a 2 hour movie, they'd have had to make so many compromises, zipping through years at a time, and would have lost many of those key 1946-1947 moments/emotions they chose to focus on.

I hope someone else makes that more comprehensive movie down the road.. but at this point I think it will be a long time, since I don't think many studios are lining up to make another J Robinson story anytime soon.

ADDING: I watched K Burns' 1940's episode Baseball late last night..So good! That series will never be outdone.

Very well made. Took my wife and daughter and they both liked it. :D

It was enjoyable but disappointing. Had sort of the same flow as "The Natural", same constant attempts to grab dramatic moments, but not as tight. Stopped 'unnaturally' at the end of the regular season. They had the subject material to make a great movie, but instead made a decent one.

I think the film makers did a good job. Believe me, it could have been much worse. They did use too much score throughout the entire film. I always cringe at films like that. It's like the director didn't trust his cast to carry the emotion of any particular scene. In the beginning, when Rickey was announcing his plan, the whole overly dramatic underscore killed it for me. It didn't need any music at all. There were also a couple scenes where the birds were so loud it was distracting... Just some thoughts from a sound guy... I bet there was more then one guy on that project who attempted to talk 'em out of the reel to reel film score. It was definitely the easiest problem to fix.

If they say the F-word twice it's an automatic rated-R. Apparently they can say the N-word 3,657 times and still be PG-13. My son turned 8 on Thursday and he won't be seeing this movie this year.

Matt, I agree with you about the film score, but I think they needed that to kindle our emotions - if it had been removed, the film might have fallen flat. I agree that it could have been much worse, but to me that doesn't excuse its not being much better.

While I understand completely your decision to not allow your son to see the movie this year, I have no problem with the PG-13 rating, which of course strongly cautions parents that there is material potentially unsuitable for children. There is no doubt profuse and near constant use of racial slurring, but such slurring was in fact commonplace and its use accurate. There was really no violence, sexuality, gore or deviant/controversial behavior to prompt a sterner rating.

There is a brief scene in the movie in which a young boy is attending a game with his father, who lets loose with the slurs. The boy is obviously upset and uncertain how to react, and then apparently feels it best to join in with dad. I think that is a great teaching moment for both young and old, and I would bet it reminded at least one old guy how he stupidly became jaded all those years ago.

Just another two cents.

Todd,

I agree. My wife and I used those exact same words when discussing this scene afterwards.

Best,

Eric