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Movie review: Secretariat
Oct 8, 2010, 2:43 PM | Updated: Mar 28, 2011, 3:51 pm
Leave it to Disney to turn the story of perhaps the most dominant race horse in history into an inspirational tale of an underdog triumphing over adversity!
Who knew that Secretariat was never really Goliath, but actually David in Goliath’s clothing? Never mind that he was actually named Horse of the Year as a two-year-old and won the Triple Crown a year later, each race in record time, and the last one by an astonishing 31 lengths.
A favorite who became a heavier and heavier favorite with each smashing victory, Secretariat nonetheless had to overcome the odds in every single race – after all there were always other horses racing against him.
This is all nonsense of course, but you see, Disney has a template. You’ve got to have an underdog outsider who no one believes in, the white hats who buck the trend and believe in him, the black hats who work underhandedly, if need be, to stop him from triumphing, the colorful, oddball character who turns out to be a lovable genius, and the skeptics, who snigger at first at the underdog, but then eventually come around to cheering him when – as he inevitably does – wins the day.
Disney will shoehorn whatever story into such a template – and the latest shoehorning on display is SECRETARIAT. You’d think he was Seabiscuit.
The other odd thing about the film is that Secretariat has a God complex – not the horse, mind you, but the movie about the horse.
It opens with Diane Lane (as Secretariat’s owner Penny Chenery Tweedy) intoning words from the Book of Job about the horse as noble steed. Not content with telling a great story about this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime horse, this movie has to oversell him. It’s so reverential, it’s as if it’s the Second Coming.
This really comes to the fore in the final Triple Crown Race. John Malkovich (as Secretariat’s trainer) assures Diane Lane the day before the race, their horse will “have wings.” And then, when he’s in the final turn of the Belmont, literally running away with the race, we’re treated to – I KID YOU NOT – a heavenly chorus of Gospel singers belting out the spiritual OH HAPPY DAY (“When Jesus walked, he washed my sins away.”) I thought Secretariat was going to sprout wings then and there (like the TriStar horse) and fly across the finish line!
Talk about gilding the lily. I know this movie wants to be inspirational but it should trust its material. It doesn’t need all the schmaltz.
