42

42 is the true story of baseball great Jackie Robinson. Robinson (played beautifully by Chadwick Boseman) was the very first African American baseball player in the MLB in 1947. This film follows two years of his life / career. The first is the year he makes the transition from star of the Negro League Kansas City Monarchs to lowly and abused on the Dodgers farm team in Montreal. The second year is his Rookie of the Year year with the Brooklyn Dodgers where he paves the way for so many things to come.

The abuse Robinson had to endure - both physically and mentally - are nearly unthinkable. He had to deal with everything from initially a team that signed a petition to have him kicked off the team, to pitchers throwing at his head, umpires making very bad calls in the other teams favor, and the fans booing him every time he came to the plate. But the worst of the abuse also made for the movies very best scene. It starts during a game with the Philadelphia Phillies in which their manager (played with particular vile by the great, underappreciated Alan Tudyk) hurls such obscenities at Robinson that it nearly made me cringe. Any and every racially negative, terrible thing that you could say to a person, Tudyk's Ben Chapman says, and then some. The scene is excrutiatingly long and intense and it makes the viewer completely uncomfortable. In other words, it is effective. The scene begins with this and continues during three Robinson at bats. We watch as Robinson tries to ignore it but his face shows such rage, anger, hatred. The scene culminates in Robinson storming off the field, through the dugout, and into the hall that connects it to the locker rooms where he screams and beats a bat against the wall. His back is to the camera and all we see is number 42, backlighted by the sunlight pouring intot he tunnel. It is a powerful scene in every possible way, from the writing to the acting to the filming. If only the entire movie were like this.

Unfornately, it isn't. The movie veers more into Lifetime movie territory. And if it were a Lifetime movie, it would be a very good one. But mostly it's cheesy and heavy handed. I know you've got to be to a certain extent but they could drive home the unspeakable abuse Robinson had to endure a little more subtlety. Yes, we all know he inspired hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions, but the parts with the little black boy following him around like a puppy (and then finding out at the end that this kid grew up to win the World Series himself) was a bit much. And then there is Harrison Ford...

ASIDE - Harrison Ford's eyebrows are so entirely distracting that I almost didn't know what to do with myself. They are the craziest eyebrows that I have ever seen on someone who wasn't a cartoon villain. All I could do at certain times was to sit there quietly and imagine getting a tiny pair of scissors and trimming them into something that looks more like an eyebrow and less like an overgrown bush. They are sort of the thickness of Martin Scorsese's eyebrows but he is a well groomed man so its as if he had a run in with a hedge, or something. Seriously, way out of control. I can't even describe it in words. END OF ASIDE.

Ford plays Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey with the sort of over the top haminess that is so often reserved for men his age. Plus, for every actually inspirational thing he says (He once tells Jackie that he wants a player who has the guts not to fight back rather than not having the guts to fight), he says five things that are intended to be inspiration but are instead hokey (i.e. Dollars are not black or white. They are green.). The older people in the audience seemed to love Ford's over the top performance, but I was just flabbergasted that he could get away with this at times near ridiculous performance.

Ford aside, the performances are pretty great. Boseman especially is amazing. He looks just like Robinson and he manages to evoke the bravery and honor of the man, as well as the anger, rage and disappointment that is simmering just beneath the surface. Tudyk is great in a small scene as well. I love Tudyk as an actor, but, boy, did he make me hate him in this movie, and that's the sign of a great actor. There are a slew of other solid performances by a ton of character actors, including Christopher Meloni, T.R. Knight and Lucas Black as the great Pee Wee Reese.

As a baseball lover, I really, really enjoyed this film. It was great to see such an influential time in baseball's history. However, as a film lover, it was sort of a disappointment. When the movie is good, it's really great. At its worse, it is nevery quite bad, although it does err on the side of mediocre quite a bit. A man who is as iconic as Jackie Robinson deserves a much better film.

Grade: B-