Movies: Robinson never had it made

Jackie Robinson is one of the most important figures of the 20th century. He was also a pretty good baseball player who, when he broke Major League Baseball’s color line in 1947, put up with lots of ugliness.

Unfortunately, Brian Hegeland’s film 42, is a sanitized, safe version of the ballplayer’s story that doesn’t even try to convey the deeply complicated nature of Robinson’s character. While our critic Dan Lybarger acknowledges the difficulties inherent in re-telling a story that has become part of American folklore, he wishes the filmmakers had a little of the intelligence and audacity that Robinson flashed both on the base paths and in his remarkable life. After all, we’ve already seen this movie — Jackie Robinson played himself The Jackie Robinson Story (1950).

Maybe we haven’t quite seen anything like Derek Cianfrance’s ambitious noir The Place Beyond the Pines, critic Piers Marchant argues. Unfortunately Cianfrance’s reach overextends his grasp, producing an intellectually interesting but ultimately emotionally cool film that’s best characterized as an “honorable misstep.” But given the scarcity of the commodity, perhaps we’ll take it.

It’s certainly better than the timidity MovieStyle editor Philip Martin perceives in either the disappointing Emperor, which should have been more about how Douglas MacArthur managed the occupation of Japan after World War II and less about the made-up, cliched love story, of the extended Gap ad that is Walter Salles’ version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. (At least Martin liked the harrowing War Witch, a story of the ongoing atrocities involving child soldiers in Africa.)

But the makers of Scary Movie 5 and the faith-based Camp were afraid to screen their wares for critics. So no glory for them.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette MovieStyle section for full reviews.

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