What did you all expect????

When you ask someone:

"Or do you actually believe that you can shoot open a lock, all cars explode upon impact, people can be impaled and loose massive amounts of blood and still have the strength to fight the bad guys and win?";

then that's as good as an insult. So I reacted to your insult.

And when someone (you) says something as ridiculous as:

"...all movie scenes are nonsensical. All drama is contrived.";

then how much credibility to do expect to receive?

All movie scenes are nonsensical? What does that even mean? All drama is contrived? How's that? Then you reinterpret it to mean that drama is based on all sorts of devices, happenstances and coincidences that simply don't happen in real life, or happen very rarely. I would differ first by saying that drama happens every day in "real life" unless you're (not you but anybody) too blunt to notice it. As well, simply intending to recreate drama for the movie screen doesn't make it so. Things must be paced properly, given proper emphasis at the right moments, presented in the right way... etc. (I'm not a filmmaker though so this is just a viewer's perspective.) I'm not going to take too much time writing about this horrible movie but just one instance of a WTF moment was when Penny Chenery had a laughing attack over Lucien's hat. Nothing funny happened to begin with and the extended length of that scene and her laughter was embarrassing. I mean, had she just been sniffing glue or something? It seemed as if Wallace went 'Let's have a giddy moment in the film where Penny relaxes and laughs and we'll just shoehorn it in right here even though our writers have no sense of humor so they can't create/write a joke."

And I have enjoyed many Walt Disney movies so just drop the accusation that I have made my judgment about Secretariat based on it being a Disney movie.

Finally, I went with my mother so she wouldn't go alone because my dad sucks and won't go to movies with her. So, there's that.





religion (re li jun) n. - the idea that you must think like me or suffer for all of eternity

"It was better than most of the movies released that year, in my opinion."

You basically lost your argument right there and showed why you liked this movie so much, but for the sake of debate let's keep going.

"Fart (or piss) joke: The fart joke didn't happen."

Oh goodness, I see you take everything literally. I tried to be more explicit by adding the parenthesis so it was clear that by "fart jokes" I was speaking in general terms of jokes about bodily functions, and that in this movie's case it was the piss. The rest of your argument there didn't make sense, what does smoking and drinking have to do with fart or piss jokes? Ok, let's go around that; yes, horses urinate. And they used a bodily function as a cheap joke. This wasn't that type of movie. Or at least, this wasn't supposed to be that type of story. But to be fair to the producers, let's allow them to try to be funny. Now let's go back to "Seabiscuit" to see if they did something similar. Oh yes, in fact they did something similar, they had Charles Howard take all of Tom Smith's horseshoes and give them away to the press as souvenirs, not only for the sake of silly laughs, but to further show the kind of people Charles Howard and Tom Smith were (Howard plays to the press, Smith is focused only on his horses). By doing that you (not YOU literally) can have that joke and still take "Seabiscuit" seriously. Meanwhile Secretariat pisses on a reporter that is speaking badly of him, because Secretariat is so damn smart he understands. Hahaha, cue five year old kids laughing. The rest of us are not. Oh wait, you were, so can't say the rest of us. Maybe there were some other adults laughing. The Disney execs for sure, thinking of how much money this silly movie was making.

"Melodramatic dialogue: Actually, I think the horse's performance in that race was something that people hadn't seen before, so it was prescient, not melodramatic."

Because the guy has psychic powers and knew Big Red was gonna give everyone the best performance in the history of U.S. racing. Must have gotten those powers from Mrs. Tweedy, who is capable of looking a horse in the eye and making him UNDERSTAND. And get better.

"Embarrassing musical numbers: It's a movie, so forgive them for adding some spice to a scene. Heaven forbid they try to liven things up."

Heaven forbid they forget to remind us it's just a Disney movie, after all!

"With the remark about how Ms. Tweedy was treated at the Kentucky Derby (and how do you know that? Were you there? Are you close friends with Ms. Tweedy?), it sounds like you wanted a documentary instead of a movie. So why did you go see this?"

Lol, seriously, just drop the documentary argument, it got old and stale long ago. How do I know? Historical records, I suppose. Or maybe I'm just assuming that they didn't think she was a crazy housewife way out of her element because she had already won the most prestigious race in America the year before, and thus proven her worth to them all already.

"Do you not know that movies based on true stories shape those truths to tell a story?"

You must have missed the part where I already commented on that, oh I don't know in the post you were replying to?

"Daughter subplot: The lessons she taught her daughter about being a woman in a male-dominated society were rather central to the film's message. Sorry you missed that."

You mean that in order for the movie to get its central message across not only does it have to do it with Mrs. Tweedy fighting the establishment but they have to be redundant with their daughter? So Disney thinks we are THAT stupid?

"So to get back to the topic of this thread: What did you all expect? It seems Secretariat was cursed by not having "real life" elements that added up to a great story..."

To be honest, based on the preliminary critics and the trailers, I wasn't expecting a great movie to begin with. However, in order to fairly judge a movie I have to see it, I can't just say it sucks because of hearsay. And why did I see it anyway? Because I happen to be a horse racing fan and I happen to regard Secretariat as the best American racehorse of all time, so the subject matter was of great interest to me. Secretariat's story was already great enough that they didn't have to shape it up to suit their egos and their marketing goals. I mean, why else would you bother making a movie about it? But I understand that Secretariat the horse and Mrs. Tweedy herself were just too damn successful from the get go to have any real tension throughout the movie. However, if that was the case why not tell the story from the point of view of people affected collaterally by his greatness? You can write a fictional story that overlaps with Secretariat's true greatness, and that way you kill two birds with one stone: you can have an uplifting story (your fictional main character or characters) AND a truer account of events (Secretariat's historic run through their eyes). The horse gets his publicity and Disney gets the movie they wanted (provided they hired better writers, of course).