Title: Secretariat Director: Randall Wallace Starring: Diane Lane, John Malkovich Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Studio: Walt Disney Pictures Genre(s): Drama Rated:       (For brief mild language)   Buy From Amazon.com: DVD / BluRay / Autobiography

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents, there is nothing I could spot that is wrong with this movie. The PG rating seems silly to me. Recommended for all ages.

Near the end of the eighties the role of a woman in a family was rapidly changing. It was the age of the hippies and women were still commonly housewives. Staying at home, cooking dinner, and doing the laundry. This movie is about one woman who was such a housewife and then made something special out of her life. In “Secretariat” a woman named Penny Chenery (Diane Lane in an excellent performance) inherits her fathers horse breeding ranch when her mother dies and her father is too old to manage the place anymore. Though her husband and brother encourage her to sell the place she refuses. She’s at a point in her life where she wonders what happened to the great life she envisioned for herself. It’s not that she doesn’t love her family. Far from it. Her family is great.

But her husband has a career. Her kids are playing sports. Her daughter is becoming a “peaceful protestor.” She’s doing laundry. When a horse is born that has the potential to go all the way to the Kentucky Derby and then some...well, she gets on board with it fast. Yes, I know Disney is trying to convince you this is about a special horse. They also tried to convince you that Robert Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol” was going to be a fun romp. But “Secretariat” is not really about the horse it’s named after. No, this is about a woman who wants more from life and decides to go for it. She wants to be someone important. She has opposition. She knows this as well as everyone else.

She’s not stupid. She knows that horse racing is a man’s game and business. Her mistakes are observed more closely than anyone else’s. It doesn’t help that her horse trainer Lucien (John Malkovich) is an eccentric old man who has a short temper and a taste for terrible looking hats. Both have a temperamental relationship: She’s a woman whose his boss and he’s a man in general. So naturally conflict arises. As for the horse himself he drives the story, but the movie shockingly keeps him at a distance. It’s pretty easy to lose faith in him (like so many do) because we’re uncertain of how he really will act. Only one man seems to truly know how the horse feels, so we have to trust him sometimes.

Thematically speaking this is probably Disney’s most mature release since “Remember The Titans.” It’s based off a true story and doesn’t talk down to it’s audience. I know that families are the main target for a movie like this, but the movie itself will likely be appreciated by adults more then kids. In fact, this is a mainstream release that is about women and made for women. It portrays female characters far more smart and likable then we saw in the years earlier travesty “Sex and the City 2.” Will this movie find an audience? Hard to say. It’s not exactly what it’s advertised to be, and the people who normally would watch this and like it probably won’t because they’ll be expecting a by-the-numbers inspirational kids film.

Not exactly a preconceived notion that helps a movie like this. Chances are it will even be compared to “Seabiscuit” from a few years earlier. While both films are about winning horses I think this movie is more slanted towards the human story rather then the animal story, where that film found a good middle ground. As such I believe that’s a better movie than this one. However this one is very realistic in that it acknowledges that horse racing is a business made mainly for men with deep pockets who want to gamble money away. Obviously this woman is in a business where the world perceives she doesn’t belong. But there’s something special about a movie where the woman can hold her own against a world full of arrogant men and holds her head high in the end.