Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Allissa .Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

donaldricco Subject matter is 5 stars, the movie itself, 3. It was fun to see this the day after Major League Baseball honored Jackie Robinson Day, and I'm glad I saw the black and white version, and not the colorized one! Super cool to see Jackie playing himself, and during his playing career no less! I've always loved his voice! And it was also super cool to see a young Ruby Dee playing his wife! What a lucky guy! I've always thought Rachel Robinson was one of the most beautiful women in the world, and Jackie gets another gorgeous lady to play his wife in a movie! What I didn't like about the film was how it was put together. Lots of short, choppy scenes that were very uneven and herky jerky. And the ends of many of those scenes were just awkwardly done. Very disruptive to the storytelling, in my opinion. But watching Jackie was well worth it, and I'm glad I finally watched this! And little things like having the umpire behind the pitcher made me appreciate the game of baseball and its long, long history.

richard-1787 I give this movie a 10 not because it is an "excellent" movie, which it is not, but because of what there is to be gotten out of it.What there is not to be gotten out of it, from what I have read, is an accurate depiction of what Robinson went through once he joined the Dodgers organization. In 1950, when this movie was made, Robinson was still very much an active player in the league, and the people who made life miserable for him, including players on the Montreal and Brooklyn teams, were very much alive, some still Robinson's colleagues. Just as the name of the league is changed to the International League, so other details are altered or ignored, probably to avoid lawsuits. In that sense, "42" can name names and give facts that this movie could not.On the other hand, what this movie offers is the chance to watch the real Jackie Robinson relive some of the difficult, terrible moments he had to go through to stay in major-league baseball - and pave the way for other Blacks to do the same. Even though this time it is only actors hurling the (I suspect very toned down) insults at him, denying him access to a restaurant, etc., you get to watch his face as he no doubt had to relive what it had felt like to experience those in real life just a few years before.It is a deeply difficult and very moving experience for the viewer as well, different from what I felt watching an actor - and a very fine actor - go through the same episodes in "42". Robinson reacts to everything very quietly. He didn't have a deep, booming voice like James Earl Jones, for example. But if you look at his face, you see that there is real power there, fighting any man's urge to strike back.The best parts of this movie are not easy viewing, but they allow us to experience, to some extent, the injustices against which Robinson had to fight with him. Not 30 years after the fact, but just three or four years later. We see the same Robinson who had just gone through all that, a Robinson who would therefore have remembered how it made him feel only too clearly.This movie doesn't have much to do with baseball. It has a very great deal to do with courage and moral strength.And also: I preferred the performance of Minor Watson here, as Branch Rickey, to Harrison Ford's portrayal in "42". Ford made Rickey a comical curmudgeon. Watson makes him much more human.-----------------------If you want to see a documentary on Robinson, try this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8xS8lZl2RIIt shows that some of the most painful lines in this movie were actually said to or about Robinson.

sol True story of Brooklyn Dodger ballplayer Jackie Robinson the man who broke the color barrier in professional Baseball and made it possible for future black ballplayers, like Willie Mays Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson to name a few, to follow him.After the end of WWII it was Brooklyn Dodger owner Branch Rickey, Minor Watson, who saw what a reservoir of talent there was in the then segregated Negro League and attempted to tap in on it. It was Jackie Robinson who was not only a star in collage football basketball baseball and track and field but was educated and well spoken, unlike most Negro players at that time, who was chosen by Rickey's top scout William Spaulding to be the man to do it: Brake Baseball's color barrier. Jackie not at first believing that he's to play in the major leagues is surprised when Spaulding knocked at his hotel room while he was playing with the Black Panthers Negro Baseball team and convinced Jackie that he was the real thing, a scout or the Brooklyn Dodgers, not someone trying to play a joke on him! Like Jackie and his fellow Black Panthers at first thought.In knowing that it was far more important for him to succeed for his race not just for himself Jackie not only had to be able to hit run and field on the baseball diamond but put up with the insults and threats to him and his family. Not just by the racist fans but his fellow baseball players, some on his own team, to make his and Branch Rickey, who put his reputation on the line in giving Jackie a chance, dream come true.It was in the Triple A Brooklyn farm team the Montreal Royals that Jackie got his first taste of what he was to run into being the only black not on the team but in the entire league. The taunts and insults that Jackie suffered from both the fans and players just toughened his resolve to succeed to the point that he not only ended up leading the league in batting with a .349 average but was named the league's "MVP" Most Valuable Player. There was a very touching and bittersweet scene in the film where Jackie being taunted by the fans about him being black is shown a cute little black cat and told to come over and say hello to a relative of his. Jackie instead of whacking the guys in the mouth like he should have got up out of the dugout and took the cat, with those who were holding it running for safety, back into the dugout with him petting the cute litter kitzel as if he somehow knew that it was suffering the same kind of abuse that he was going through at the time.Finally making it to the big leagues in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers who lost the 1946 National League Pennant on the very last day of the season in a two out of three game playoff, with the Dodgers losing the first two games, to the World Champion St.Louis Cardinals he in fact was the extra ingredient that was able to get the Dodgers to become the 1947 National League Champs. Jackie did all that not just with his hitting fielding and dazzling running on the bases running but with his courage as well both on and off the field which earned Jackie the 1947 Rookie of the Year Award. Made in 1950 while Jackie Robinson was still an active player "The Jackie Robinson Story" is about as autobiographical a movie as a movie could be. It showed that by turning the other cheek and concentrating on his game and not letting his temper get the best of him Jackie achieved the impossible in being a both fiery combatant as well as gentleman at the same time. Which in the end even had his biggest detractors,fan and ballplayers alike, end up standing up and cheering wildly for for him whenever he hit the ball either out of the park or the infield. It was that, Jackie's ability to stand tall and not give into his pent up emotions, far more then his baseball playing ability that made Jackie Robinson the Baseball legend that he is today.P.S Jackie Robinson #42 uniform was retired not only from the Dodger team but from all of Major League Baseball in 1997 making him the first and only Major League Baseball player to have that honor. What most people don't know is that there was a Dodger player George Jeffcoat who had the famed #42 before Jackie did while he was a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers back in 1939.

dhartzell While Jackie Robinson was never in danger of Oscar consideration for this performance as himself, within the confines of a low-budget movie with a creaky script he does a creditable job.And perhaps more to the point, his charisma is palpable ... and almost makes it obvious why Rickey decided he was the man to run the gauntlet in 1947. He's just so damned likable!Also: I have to say that the heart of the movie -- and I don't think *any* actor could have done a better job here -- is the sequence where Robinson shows up for his first practice with the Montreal Royals. He tries to join a couple of pepper games without success and, on his third try, grows tired of being ignored and calls for a fellow player to throw him the ball. Cut to a medium close up of Robinson as he pounds his mitt and, with a poignant look of anxiety, expectation, and defiance, holds it up, asking for the throw.Nearly as good is the smile that crosses Robinson's face when the player with the ball (who gets his own reverse shot, looking at his white teammates skeptically as if to say, "Should I throw to this {your racial epithet here}?") finally tosses it to him. That smile and Robinson's gesture with his glove on catching the ball -- the kind major league infielders usually reserve for acknowledging someone's sparkling play --says more than any dialog could. And it feels unscripted in its natural tension and release. Brilliant!I doubt Robinson needed *any* coaching to do that scene. And I suspect nobody then or now could have done it better.Robinson is the movie. Most everything else, with the possible exception of the young Ruby Dee's serviceable (if undemanding) performance as Robinson's wife, is window dressing.