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The Worst Film Ever

hyped garbage

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This does its best for the time it was made in, and while it wasn't a top Hollywood studio, it was given a lot of attention. Baseball players are the heroes of young boys, and like my growing up era as a young baseball fan, I didn't see color. I saw balls, bats, bases and bunts. Home runs, strike outs, double plays, pitchers hitting grand slams and winning the game. The years have gone by, but the memory has remained, as well as the names, like Robinson, long retired. Some white, some black, but like my father, a fan during Robinson's era, said, they are all our heroes.Perhaps too nice and missing much of the racial tension concerning his being named as the first black pro ball player, it lightly deals with serious issues and eliminates much of the controversy. The recent movie about Robinson's life was freer to show all the issues and present all the people involved as real human brings. Robinson as himself is obviously going to be a fantasy view of what he really went through, and a young Ruby Dee is sincere but not really given much of a challenge considering her own considerable talents. Gentle Louise Beavers adds her own grace to the role of Jackie's mother, while Minor Watson is commanding as the white mentor who looks after him. The white characters are painted without grays, either too accepting or totally racist, but it is obvious to me that the writers feared offending baseball fans and professionals who went to see the movie. This is a movie that I wanted to praise because of my own high hopes that it would be fearless in revealing the ugly truths of racism that has greatly changed, if not all disappeared.

Found this movie tucked away on one of those public-access TV channels, as I believe the copyright ran out years ago and a very curious film it is too. Made as I understand while Robinson was still actively playing baseball, it covers a very recent time-span of his emergence into big-league baseball where he broke the "colour bar" in becoming the first black player to play for a major team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Here, he plays himself although almost everyone else in the cast is played by an actor. If nothing else, it was certainly quite a brave film to make, I'd imagine, as the bigger civil-rights breakthroughs of the 50's hadn't yet been accomplished and wouldn't for some time, by the likes of Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King of course.Chosen by Dodgers manager Branch Rickey, Robinson has to endure loathsome racial discrimination from fans, opponents and even fellow team-mates and I would imagine in real life, he suffered far worse than the watered down treatment we see depicted here. It's certainly a well-meaning film and gets its point across but it's a shame the action is so static, the acting so wooden and the writing so clichéd. The best I can say about Robinson himself is that he reads his lines probably better than he says them. His faux-naive approach does however throw into relief his nobility in passively dealing with the threats and taunts in such a self-controlled and dignified manner. The actual baseball scenes are quite boringly staged too, one wonders that actual game-footage couldn't have been used instead, at least for realism's sake.I'm no aficionado of baseball, being from across the water but was aware of Robinson's history-making breakthrough in US society as well as sport. This film, for all its faults has its heart in the right place, and is watchable more as a historical document than as bona-fide cinema entertainment.

I decided to watch this movie because it was listed as one of the 300 titles chosen for the AFI's newest top 100 movies list (inspirational movies). I think that it could have made the list if (1) someone other than Jackie Robinson was playing Jackie Robinson, and (2) they would have made the movie with a more complete look at his life. By having the star play himself, it does a decent job of showing what he was actually like. He obviously understood what was so important about keeping his demeanor in check, always being polite to the manager and other teammates, etc. I think I've heard stories that, when he was actually on the baseball field, he was one of the toughest, meanest SOBs ever in baseball. That would make sense as compared to today's Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, who are one thing to the camera, and another on the playing field. I think it would be in great interest to have this movie redone, showing his entire career (including the Brooklyn Dodgers' only championship in 1955) and his future work to build up the black community. It was sad to notice that, with the movie being only 77 minutes long, some parts actually seemed to include filler (ex: the large amount of play-by-play calling that seemed quite unnecessary). Plus, it would have been nice to have had a larger part for the brilliant Ruby Dee as his wife. So, to conclude, it's not a bad movie, but it lacks the full story of his life to be really great.

I think this movie had really bad production value. The lack of acting makes me think they should mark it as an early docudrama. It may have had no money available for its making. I feel bad that it was a ruff ride into the Major League for Jackie Robinson.I believe he was much better than many of the white players of his day. He had to be really great to break the color barrier of the time. No getting around that this was a really bad movie.Wish there was more info about its makers. They may have been limited by the quality of actors that were willing to take on the project. Maybe no money to get good people.