This is a true story about underdogs competing for glory. Every scene was predictable, and the ending was pretty apparent within the first ten minutes, so the characters needed to be interesting, and the story needed to be tight and compelling. Unfortunately, the writing was pretty bad. There were scenes where I found myself rewriting dialog in my head that was so much more interesting than what the actors spoke on the screen. We needed to understand what motivated these underdogs but were given only a few stock scenes about how poor they were. We needed personified enemies but got only a couple short scenes where someone insulted them or they insulted each other. The main character's father showed up briefly toward the end of the movie, but it's not clear if he was a good guy under bad circumstances or a terrible jerk. It didn't really matter anyway, so his character just wasted screen time.
There could have been a running visual description of the hardships of the Great Depression for some context, but instead we saw one soup kitchen in the beginning. We all know how bad Hitler and the Nazis were, but it would have been nice to have an intertwined thread showing Nazi aggression and the Americans' reaction to it, so you cared who won the final race, but if you didn't know any history, Hitler seemed to be just some angry dude.
There was no chemistry between the main character and the girl who eventually became his girlfriend. She was annoying from beginning to end and he was robotlike in her presence. After a very chaste relationship, they suddenly ended up in bed in one short, surprising scene.
The cinematography was very nice, the best thing about the movie.
In conclusion, this is a movie for a lazy afternoon in front of the TV or an airplane flight, but not worth paying the price in a theater.
There could have been a running visual description of the hardships of the Great Depression for some context, but instead we saw one soup kitchen in the beginning. We all know how bad Hitler and the Nazis were, but it would have been nice to have an intertwined thread showing Nazi aggression and the Americans' reaction to it, so you cared who won the final race, but if you didn't know any history, Hitler seemed to be just some angry dude.
There was no chemistry between the main character and the girl who eventually became his girlfriend. She was annoying from beginning to end and he was robotlike in her presence. After a very chaste relationship, they suddenly ended up in bed in one short, surprising scene.
The cinematography was very nice, the best thing about the movie.
In conclusion, this is a movie for a lazy afternoon in front of the TV or an airplane flight, but not worth paying the price in a theater.