Your appreciation of “Secretariat” may depend on how you react to Diane Lane having a human/animal mind meld with a horse and then later, giving that same horse a pep talk before a big race. If just reading that made you even slightly amused, then you might be best advised to say away from the pure, hay-fed corn that is Disney’s housewife-and-horse-overcoming-the-odds crowdpleaser, “Secretariat.”
To be fair, the studio and director Randall Wallace do put some solid talent in front of the camera to tell the true story of the Triple Crown winning horse who still holds the margin-of-victory record and speed record for dirt races. Diane Lane leads the cast as Penny Chenery, the feisty housewife who throws off her oppressive apron to take over the family horse farm. John Malkovich delivers another enjoyable turn as a weirdo eccentric, playing the French Canadian trainer Lucien Laurin. “Hey it’s that guy” faces like James Cromwell and Fred Dalton Thompson do their jobs well playing white-guys-with-money, while the always superb Margo Martindale brings the only real heart to the film as the longstanding Chenery family secretary Miss Ham. Rounding things out are some HBO staples, with the perpetually teenaged looking Fred Savage Syndrome victim Kevin “Eric Murphy on Entourage” Connolly growing a mustache and pretending to be a sports reporter and Nelsan “Lafayatte on True Blood” Ellis wasted in a thankless part as Secretariat’s groom Eddie Sweat.
If the film has some solid talent to work with — and some great set design and lovely cinematography by Dean Semler — it can’t raise the dramatic stakes no matter how hard it tries. That’s not to say that a film can’t be made without knowing the result, but in the case of “Secretariat,” the actual roadblocks Penny and her horse faced were not all that insurmountable making the wait for the inevitable triumph merely a chore. From the moment the horse is born, we are told it is something special by how quickly it stands up on its own four legs. During training, the horse is fast and doesn’t seem to tire. It begins to easily win races and in fact, the only major hurdle Secretariat faces is an abscess in its mouth which makes this the first film we’ve seen in ages where a boil was a lynchpin for dramatic tension.
So if the hurdles aren’t on the racetrack, then they must be off right? Well, in the early part of the film Penny’s brother Hollis Chenery (Dylan Baker) is eager to sell off the farm to try and pay back some of the massive inheritance tax the family will owe in the wake of their father’s passing. But those worries are quickly put aside when Secretariat shows himself to be a horse that can not only save their farm, but make them millions. Ok, so what about Penny’s old-fashioned husband, Jack Tweedy (Dylan Walsh)? He certainly isn’t happy his wife is now splitting time between his family and her revitalized interest in the family horse raising trade, but perhaps in an effort to keep things family friendly, that discord is muted. Jack doesn’t do much except ask rhetorical questions, furrow his brow and quietly exit rooms. And he eventually comes around, but of course, having your wife manage a million dollar horse certainly doesn’t hurt.
Ok, then certainly if the on track troubles aren’t present, and behind the scenes things aren’t as bad as they seem, then surely, as a feminist message, “Secretariat” is a winner. Not quite. Chenery’s arrival and conquering of the the very male world of horse racing is quickly done with a variety of quips and one-liners. There is a subplot involving one her hippie teenager daughters, Kate, that is so underwritten and contrived that its hard to know what to make of it. In one scene she wants to go to Guatemala — Jack is agains it, Penny seems for it — but the threat of a real dinner table discussion is quickly diffused, literally, by serving dessert. Kate is also fighting her high school to put on an anti-war skit during the Christmas pagaent, and when she wins the fight and puts on the skit, in an unintentionally hilarious scene, Penny listens long distance via a payphone outside the auditorium held up by her son (she can’t make her plane due to inclement weather) as her daughter sings “Silent Night” as stoic sympathizers with placards march around her chanting “No war.” While we suppose there is lesson in there somewhere about following your dreams, but that’s certainly made very easy when you’re upper class and blessed with the fastest race horse of all time.
Some Oscar talk has swirled around the film, with it being eyed as a potential “The Blind Side”-esque candidate but we don’t see it happening. While the film will definitely play easier for older more conservative Academy members who like their films gift wrapped for them, Diane Lane’s performance while perfectly adequate is far less showy than Sandra Bullock’s turn. This is not the “Erin Brokovich” of horse racing. Randall Wallace’s direction doesn’t fuss around too much. It’s reliable, and does justice to the paint-by-numbers structure of the story. He really just has to make sure everything looks nice, and it does. The horse races are about as exciting as horse races get (meaning, if you didn’t like the sport before, “Secretariat” won’t change your mind about it). But outside of Lane (who is longshot already facing stiff competition in a year with a number of strong female lead performances) the film’s award chances seem small. And while “Seabiscuit” got nominated in seven categories including Best Picture back in 2003, in 2010 — even with ten slots — its a very different cinematic landscape.
But don’t take our sour take on the film as a note that it’s terrible. It’s not. It’s just wholly predictable and slightly boring. It’s a very handsome piece of dramatic filmmaking that is as bland and uninteresting as it is formulaic. While its built like any other sports film — where the underdogs go on to win the big game — “Secretariat” is curiously missing the beating heart of the characters, but most importantly, the community who rallies behind them. “Secretariat” was a national sensation but we never feel that sense except for a brief moment of archival footage. What is it about “Secretariat” that mesmerized a nation more than three decades and why has the sport failed to do the same in the years since? Perhaps those are questions for another film, but in this one, “Secretariat” races right in the middle of the pack. [C]