User:HipJorge/Secretariat

Reception

Critical reaction

Secretariat has received generally positive reviews. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes reports that 67% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 109 reviews, with an average score of 6.2/10. The critical consensus is: "Rousing, heartwarming, and squarely traditional, ‘Secretariat’ offers exactly what you'd expect from an inspirational Disney drama---no more, no less." Although the film misrepresented the results of the 1973 Wood Memorial, which was actually won by Angle Light, a horse that also was trained by Secretariat's trainer, Lucien Laurin, Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert gave this movie four out of four stars claiming that "...this whole movie feels authentic".

CBN.com gave Secretariat a "Jumbo Popcorn" rating, saying: "Though many may consider ‘Seabiscuit’ as the preeminent horse-racing film, ‘Secretariat’ beats it by lengths."

Box office

The film opened in third place at the box office in its opening weekend, grossing $4 million on opening day and $12,694,770 over the three-day weekend, just falling behind The Social Network and Life as We Know It. The film had an average of $4,132 from 3,072 locations. In its second weekend, the film held extremely well with only a 27% slide to $9.3 million and finishing fourth for a $3,032 average from 3,072 theaters. It then held up even better in its third weekend, slipping only 25% to just over $7 million and finishing sixth for a $2,254 average from 3,108 theaters. In its first three weeks, the film earned $38 million domestically.

In the UK, the film was released on 4th December, 2010 with no promotion & was withdrawn from most UK cinemas after just one week.

O'Hehir review

Film critic Andrew O'Hehir of Salon.com began some controversy by his review of the film writing that though he enjoyed the movie, that "doesn't stop me from believing that in its totality ‘Secretariat’ is a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl, and all the more effective because it presents as a family-friendly yarn about a nice lady and her horse." He felt the film was "presenting a honey-dipped fantasy vision of the American past as the Tea Party would like to imagine it, loaded with uplift and glory and scrubbed clean of multiculturalism and social discord. In the world of this movie, strong-willed and independent-minded women like Chenery are ladies first (she's like a classed-up version of Sarah Palin feminism), left-wing activism is an endearing cute phase your kids go through (until they learn the hard truth about inheritance taxes), and all right-thinking Americans are united in their adoration of a Nietzschean Überhorse, a hero so superhuman he isn't human at all." He took issue with the portrayal of the era the story takes place 1969-1973 saying it was portrayed as a "golden age" despite the fact that "The year Secretariat won the Triple Crown was the year the Vietnam War ended and the Watergate hearings began. You could hardly pick a period in post-Civil War American history more plagued by chaos and division and general insanity…. The words 'Vietnam' and 'Nixon' are never uttered." He felt the message of the movie for today’s audience "was a comforting allegory, like Glenn Beck's sentimental Christmas yarn". O'Hehir felt that despite finding ourselves "in an enraged and dangerously bifurcated society" the film wants us to believe "The real America has been here all along, and we can get it back. If we just believe in -- well, in something unspecified but probably pretty scary." Because the film opened with a quote from the Book of Job and ended with a hymn, he felt the film "was constructed and marketed with at least one eye on the conservative Christian audiences who embraced 'The Blind Side'. He also pointed out that the rival trainer, Pancho Martin, "as an evil, chauvinistic braggart is fictional and highly unpleasant -- and it's tough not to notice that he's one of only two nonwhite speaking characters in the film. The other one is Eddie (Nelsan Ellis), an African-American groom who belongs to a far more insidious tradition of movie stereotypes. Eddie dances and sings. He loves Jesus and that big ol' horse. He is loyal and deferential to Miz Penny, and injects soul and spirit into her troubled life." O’Hehir went on to praise Lane’s performance and the cinematographer, but ended the review calling the film "a quasi-inspirational fantasia of American whiteness and power. Horses don't go to the movies, and this movie is about human beings, and our nonsensical but inescapable yearning to find the keys to the future in stupid ideas about a past that never existed."

Reaction to O'Hehir

In response, fellow critic Roger Ebert wrote that O’Hehir made “a review of ‘Secretariat’ so bizarre I cannot allow it to pass unnoticed. I don't find anywhere in ‘Secretariat’ the ideology he discovers there. In its reasoning, his review resembles a fevered conspiracy theory.” He went on to say “I am a liberal who has found more than his share of the Dark Side in seemingly innocent films. …I attended ‘Secretariat’ and saw a straightforward, lovingly crafted film about a great horse and the determined woman who backed him against a posse of men who thought she should get her pretty little ass off the horse farm and get back to raisin' those kids and darnin' those socks.” He listed several other films set in the 1970s that didn’t mention Vietnam or Watergate. He pointed out that the daughter in the film does become an anti-war activist, a point which Ebert believes O’Hehir dismissed too flippantly and points out that Penny does not condemn her daughter’s choice but tells her to pursue her own path. Ebert points out that the horse was not a “genetic freak” but a product of selective breeding, “I question if a single American, right-thinking or left-thinking, thought even once of Secretariat as a Nietzschean Überhorse. Nor did many consider the Triple Crown victories as a demonstration of white superiority, because race horses (which seem to enjoy winning for reasons of their own) are happily unaware of race.” In Ebert’s opinion the passing quote from Job was not enough to brand the film as a repository of Christianity, and he “found it rather secular.” He also pointed out that portraying someone as deferential to their employer does not automatically mean racial stereotypes are being advanced. He pointed out that Eddie Sweat is portrayed as forming and guiding Penny’s judgment. Ebert repeated his general respect for O’Hehir’s work and is sure he will do better in the future, adding “I myself have written insane reviews. It happens.”

Bill Nack the author of the book the film is based on pointed out that Pancho Martin’s verbal attack on Laurin before the Kentucky Derby that O’Hehir sees as contrived to inject racism, was not. The film lifted Martin’s diatribes against Laurin from Nack’s book which records the words Martin used from Nack’s tape-recorder he employed at the time. Nack wondered who O’Hehir could claim as a source to say Martin wasn’t boastful.

Conservative film critic John Nolte, and Conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh also took issue with O’Hehir’s review.

In response to Ebert, O’Hehir wrote that he was hyperbolic, “My hyperbole in the ‘Secretariat’ review was supposed to be funny, and also to provoke a response. I appear to have succeeded brilliantly with the second part! The results on ‘funny’ are more mixed. …I think you frequently read my gag lines as being deadly serious, mix or conflate different aspects of my argument (e.g., I don't say or think anything about the horse being evil, or representing evil), and confuse events in real life with what we see in the film.” He went on to say “Now then: I do indeed compare ‘Secretariat’ to ‘master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl’, a deliberately outrageous claim that, I suspect, pissed you off right at the outset. Let me elaborate a little. In my view…The most effective kind of propaganda depicts normal life, or rather an idealized vision of normal life, one that (as one of my readers put it) "makes a particular worldview seem natural, right and appealing."

Home media

According to Box Office Magazine, Secretariat is being released on DVD, as well as a 2-disc Blu-ray & DVD combo pack that will include a digital download on January 25, 2011. Bonus features on the DVD will include: Deleted scenes and a director introduction. The Blu-ray bonuses will include: A look at how the racing scenes were filmed, an interview with Penny Chenery, and a profile of Secretariat's 1973 Preakness race.