42 is inspirational and cloying all at once

There are stories we tell about the past that show how things have changed, and look at the momentous paradigm shifts of society. But it’s complicated to think about things in a high-level systemic perspective, of a million cogs and moving parts, of thousands of people and processes causing changes. It’s far easier to tell those stories in the context of one individual we can follow along the way — and thus we have the heroic biopic. These stories can easily become schmaltzy and overly sentimental, overwhelmed by emotion and the desire to show the importance of historical changes.

42 tells the based-on-a-true-story of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in professional baseball in 1947 when he was hired to the Brooklyn Dodgers by Branch Rickey, club president and general manager of the Dodgers. Of course, it’s based on a true story, so we get dramatized versions of things we can’t possibly verify as being true, private conversations and personal experiences never shared publicly. Here the famed shortstop is played by Chadwick Boseman, who has the very difficult task of portraying a “hero of history.” He’s not given a lot to do most of the time, but sometimes he shows real emotion; Jackie has to deal with the media and both overt and subtle racism from outside forces and teammates alike. It’s helped by the relative unknown nature of Boseman, who hasn’t acted in that much, so we aren’t distracted by a known face. Harrison Ford played Rickey, in full on prosthetics and bushy eyebrows to look like the famed historical figure.

Naturally we get a bit of a summary of Jackie’s journey, starting from when Rickey decides to hire a black player and showing Jackie’s successes and failures on his way to the World Series. There’s a bit of his home life, portrayed as saccharine as you could imagine, although the acting makes it better than the writing. Journalist Wendell Smith (Andre Holland) is also around to tell Jackie’s story to the world in real time (and to the audience). There’s a boatload of great side performances here, from Christopher Meloni as the hardcase Leo Durocher, manager of the Dodgers, John C. McGinley doing a hilarious job as dry, witty announcer Red Barber, and Alan Tudyk as ridiculously racist Ben Chapman, manager of rival team the Phillies. Harrison Ford is also amusing, if a bit caricatured, in his gravely voice and silly makeup. The acting is overall excellent and the movie looks great — it really immerses you into these classic games of baseball, even if you don’t know the rules.

This is the first big picture (meaning not a TV movie) about Jackie Robinson since The Jackie Robinson Story in 1950, which starred the ballplayer as himself. The part he was born to play, I suppose. 42 tries quite hard to do a great job telling an important story about real history, and does it pretty decently. But it’s rare that we see a glimpse of Jackie as anything like a real person; when we do, that’s when the movie shines. There does seem to be a lot of “look at how bad it was” (which is certainly true), but it gets to the point where it’s kind of a blur, and you might forget that this really happened to real people. It’s a great temptation to canonize people that aren’t actually perfect, and this movie barely squeaks by that problem. It manages to be a feel good time because of the performances, look, and experience; not to mention the actually inspirational true story behind it all. But like most biopics, it’ll probably just end up on the enormous list of them that don’t really stand out much.