I hate movies that treat the dead like they could never do no wrong and they had supernatural powers, etc etc. Is this a real warts and all movie or some fairly tale they made up to cash in on the popularity of the late DE?
shareI thought this movie was pretty good. I am not a fan of Nascar at all, but I am a huge F1 and WRC fan. I knew very little about the man and it did a good dry of portraying his rags to riches, his relationship with dale jr. and his broken marriages. If you have an interest in racing or want to learn about a sports icon, I recommend it.
shareNo. You see the vulnerable side of Dale Earnhardt. I would definitely reccommend it even though I was never a fan of his.
shareLemmy, this film definitely shows the warts, and portrays Earnhardt as a real human being, not a god. Barry Pepper did a fantastic job, in my opinion.
The script, however, might present some challenges to a non-fan. Large chunks of his life and career are either glossed over or left out entirely (there's only so much you can do with 2 hours, including commercials). Most NASCAR fans can fill in the blanks well enough, but someone coming into the movie 'cold' might be left sometimes wondering how we got from point A to point B....
But that shouldn't ruin the film, which is really less about racing than about the relationships between fathers and sons, and in that capacity it's well done and pretty touching.
Dittos to what Wheelz04 said. Dale Earnhardt was not shown in the most positive light in this movie, and neither was his father Ralph. The movie made a point of pointing out a lot of the underlying tension between Dale and Ralph, as well as Dale and Dale Jr. Recently, in July of 2006, Dale Earnhardt Jr. had his grandmother, Martha Earnhardt on his XM Satelite radio show. Martha was Dale Earnhardt's mother, and Ralph Earnhardt's wife. She hated the movie. That's understandable, because it portrayed her husband and son in a not so positive way at times. How truthfully did the movie portray the Earnhardts? Probably not very accurately, because most of what they had to go on was conjecture, but there was certainly tension in the Earnhardt family, and that's no different even today. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is the franchise driver for Dale Earnhardt Inc., but it's obvious that his relationship with his stepmother Theresa Earnhardt, who owns DEI, is strained at times.
Just my 2 cents as a fan who follows Nascar and can never read enough Nascar news.
Oh, and Nascar isn't a sport? Most of the drivers lose up to 5 - 10 lbs. of total body weight during an average 500 mile race. The Nextel Cup series is 38 races. That's the longest season in any sport, spanning from February to November. Anyone that can survive a schedule such as that is an athlete in my mind.
I am a huge JG fan, but i still loved the movie, except for not showing the rivalry between he an djeff
shareYeah, I knew nothing about him and was confused about how he got from one point of his life to another...that's my main complain. But yeah, there is only so much you can do with 75-90 minutes.
shareI've been a NASCAR fan all my life. I met Dale in person when I was a kid. I watched this movie with my best friend who knows only a tiny bit about NASCAR and he really enjoyed it, especially because I could tell him more details about the stories and people in it. We were both a little annoyed by the foreshadowing, where he would wake up with nightmares, because it made for very jumpy transitions from good moments. But anyways, yeah, he's not a hard-core fan or anything, but I can see outside people liking this movie. I thought it was as good as someone could do without making it a Days of Thunder type movie. It's also nice to see ESPN respect someone from racing too.
I absolutely cannot stand Nascar, but I wanted to see this movie and I'm glad I did. It was a really well done movie. A movie like this could have been great in theaters.
shareI just finished watching this one, and *truly* enjoyed it!
I work in a video store and we had just gotten 2 copies of this one. I put them out on the shelf Monday night after we closed and when I came in Tuesday afternoon, they were gone. (Heck if I know what they were thinking only sending us 2 copies). While I honestly am not a fan of any kind of sports (I've never even watched ESPN before tonight), curiosity got the better of me and I decided to catch it tonight.
This movie made the man a little more real for me than just a face on a Coke machine or a calendar. Like I said, I've never had much use for sports, but this was really well done, as far as movies go.
Even if you're not a fan, do watch this movie. Learn what everyone else is talking about.
:-)
This is from my brain, so no guarantees.
yes i like it. but i am a jeff gordon fan
class of 2005
yes, definitely a good movie even if you aren't a fan. It made me understand him a little better, although I was never a fan.
I only rooted for the man one time, and its one of my personal favorites.
Go Tony Stewart
http://s14.invisionfree.com/World_of_NASCAR/index.php
I'm not sure. I was a huge fan of the late Dale Earnhardt.
shareI was never a fan of Earnhardt, but being a huge Kevin Harvick fan, I had to check it out. Even though so much was left out, this made me a fan and wish I hadn't cheered against him back in the 90's, so I'd say yeah its good for people who weren't fans.
shareBesides it's faults it is a good and entertaining film. I first watched this around the time I got into racing in 2004.
It isn't very accurate at parts and skips some stuff. For Example:
-Jake Elder was his crew chief for barely a year and left, when he won the title in 1980 he had a 20 year old crew chief. None of his crew chiefs besides Elder were mentioned for that matter.
-He didn't stay with Childress from 1981-2001. He went to a Ford team from 1982-1983.
-He didn't meet Theresa after the Charlotte race, he met her earlier when she was 16.
-Earnhardt and Waltrip didn't straight up hate each other on or off the track. They had a rivalry but were friends until Earnhardt's death, they both drove each others cars as well.
-They got car models wrong and other silly errors.
This movie was not made by Nascar fans or looked over for accuracy by experts that for sure, but it was still a fun movie. It shows Earnhardt the man, not Earnhardt the hero. He was never perfect and this movie shows that.
I agree with your points about this movie being pretty careless with facts.
It was also obvious that it wasn't made by people who understood NASCAR. Much of the dialogue felt forced and unnatural. By I do disagree with your last point about the portrayal as a man and not a hero. I wish they would have conveyed more of his larger then life persona that made him god-like in the eyes of his fans.
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