Seabiscuit Reviews
Top Critic
Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.
[It] may be too airbrushed for its own good, but in the end nothing can stop this story from putting a lump in your throat.
I found this film stultifyingly self-important and, despite the regularity with which it cuts to the chase, weirdly static.
For a film about an unfancied underdog, Seabiscuit is just far too pleased with itself.
Watching this movie, you get the feeling that the Depression existed so that Seabiscuit could be memorialized.
In the structure of his screenplay Ross has taken a risk, and he has not quite brought it off.
[Seabiscuit] clicks on all cylinders as a technical achievement in re-creating a piece of racetrack history, though its larger sociological statements are more than a little overblown and oversimplified.
Ross restores the good name of crowd-pleasing.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit is for the ages. Ross' version is designed to last only until the next Oscar season rolls around.
Writer/director Gary Ross' movie isn't grand, but it's very good.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Like a Ken Burns documentary relieved of the burden of accuracy, this is history as a warm bath you slip into for a while before stepping back into the chill of the present.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Even told in an overinflated, overexplicit way, the story still has a kick.
| Original Score: 3/5
Seabiscuit is resoundingly well made and emotionally satisfying.
This is a movie that gets it all right.
| Original Score: 4/4
If you don't go away entertained, informed and sated with satisfaction, you need to have your pulse checked to see if you still have one.
Seabiscuit the movie gets it right -- not only providing exciting, saddle's-eye-view racing scenes, but also recalling the Depression era when 'the Biscuit' came from behind and gave the suffering nation hope.
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| Original Score: 3/4
It's the kind of movie that makes you feel better for having watched it, a film of endless hope and energy.
| Original Score: A
What Seabiscuit lacks in weight it makes up for in its old-fashioned faith that Americans will always embrace the underdog, always look to a brighter future and always bet on themselves.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The real find of the film is Gary Stevens as George Woolf, the famous jockey who steps in at a crucial moment for his friend Pollard.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Much like the horse it celebrates, Seabiscuit outruns its problems and comes home a winner by a nose.
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| Original Score: A-
The best thing about Seabiscuit is that it will make a lot of people hungry to read the book. They've seen the pretty pictures; now they'll want to enter the world.
A well-crafted assemblage of pathos and rousing moments, solidly acted and handsomely shot -- but it's far from champion material.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Bright, uplifting adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's runaway bestseller.
Seabiscuit may be a bit of cinematic comfort food, but it's elevated by an abundant sincerity.
| Original Score: B+
Seabiscuit will satisfy those who have read the book, and I imagine it will satisfy those like myself, who have not.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
In a summer film season filled with plotless star vehicles and exploding sequels, Seabiscuit easily rides to the front of the pack.
| Original Score: 4/5
Seabiscuit grew out of a restless, populist strain in American culture. Seabiscuit, decorous to a fault, pays tribute to that spirit without partaking of it.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Even if thundering hoofbeats don't automatically electrify you, you'll be tempted to cheer when the dark horse crosses the finish line first.
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| Original Score: 4/4
It is not as exceptional a film as the reality deserves, but with a story this strong and races this expertly re-created, it squeezes out a victory by being as good a movie as it needs to be.
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| Original Score: 3/5
A handsomely mounted Hollywood affair with a can't-miss story.
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| Original Score: B+
You get the feeling Ross doesn't want to entertain us so much as make us better human beings.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Corny but effective.
| Original Score: 3/4
Despite the mugging from Macy and sparks of genuine turmoil generated by the ever-surprising Maguire, there isn't a spontaneous moment in the whole picture.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Even though Seabiscuit is a little on the long side, it works more often than not.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Seabiscuit is a good movie, but it could have been a great one -- it just misses by a nose.
Sleek, beautiful and packed with emotion, not too flashy but full of heart, this is a movie worthy of its unlikely yet glorious subject.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Cerebral populism aside, there's some moderately exciting action here.
If you've been waiting all summer for a story that doesn't rely on explosions, car chases and computer-generated effects, here it is.
Seabiscuit aims to be a crowd pleaser, and for the most part it is.
