Seabiscuit

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Seabiscuit revives the sweeping pleasures of movies that address and respect the mass audience, raising the common denominator instead of pandering to it. This crowd-pleaser rouses honest and engulfing cheers.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A thrilling, beautifully crafted, fact-based horse story that's not merely the summer's finest movie, but may well be the one to catch come Academy Awards time.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

A grand ride. Sleek, beautiful and packed with emotion, not too flashy but full of heart, this is a movie worthy of its unlikely yet glorious subject: Depression-era America's best-loved racehorse and the two races that made him a legend.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's not the most viscerally exhilarating racing saga or squishy animal movie ever made, but it's a terrific period piece. It's also a well-acted, engrossing and satisfying character drama that stands out like a diamond in this summer of sequels and comic-book violence.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Yes, it's that cheesy, but it's also surprisingly appealing. After all, the horse Seabiscuit really WAS that phenomenal.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie's races are thrilling because they must be thrilling; there's no way for the movie to miss on those, but writer-director Gary Ross and his cinematographer, John Schwartzman, get amazingly close to the action.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Unabashedly hokey, but would you want it any other way? In an era of cynical junk (did anyone say “Bad Boys II”?), Ross restores the good name of crowd-pleasing.

Newsweek David Ansen

Seabiscuit may be too airbrushed for its own good, but in the end nothing can stop this story from putting a lump in your throat.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

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. On some days, that is enough.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

Although nowhere near the class of its equine hero, is quite a satisfying ride.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

Aesop endowed animals with human traits to teach us lessons. Seabiscuit almost does the reverse. By means of Ross's adroit shooting and editing, we ourselves pound bravely along the track.

Time Richard Schickel

Ross is a filmmaker with a taste for inherently sentimental tales…but the discipline not to play mawkishly to our sentiments. You will be moved by Seabiscuit--but not to tears.

The New Yorker David Denby

If Ross had merely told his story and re-created the media folk culture of the thirties, the movie might have been a classic. [4 August 2003, p. 84]

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Actors dominate with finely nuanced performances where every scene feels dramatically right.

Empire Angie Errigo

William H. Macy is a scream as the composite radio announcer whose hyperbolic racetrack reports are not only hilarious, but illustrate the impact of radio in creating a mass culture and how it was instrumental in making sporting events a nationwide obsession.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

Seabiscuit is a good enough movie, in the sense that it's a well-crafted assemblage of pathos and rousing moments, solidly acted and handsomely shot -- but it's far from champion material.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

On first acquaintance, Seabiscuit seems to be about anything but horse racing: the disappearance of the American frontier after 1910, our love affair with automotive speed, the passing of a rural way of life, homelessness during the Depression.

USA Today Mike Clark

Fortunately, a movie that needs some levity gets a comic boost from William H. Macy as a fictional racing handicapper from the golden days of radio. As if training a horse, Macy cues us to laugh every time he's on screen.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Eventually, Seabiscuit settles into a nice rhythm, and, as it enters the stretch run, it exhibits all the necessary elements of a good sports movie. Like the horse it's named after, Seabiscuit has a lot of heart, and, in the end, that's what won me over.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

This rousing story of the comeback colt comes close to a modern-day Frank Capra film without the pandering or mawkishness. Yes, it's a bit hokey, but if you fight the movie's gait you'll miss the excitement of the race.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

In the end, Seabiscuit gets right the things that matter.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

This crowd-pleaser is a genuinely inspirational film, gorgeously filmed and wonderfully acted, echoing an uplifting sentiment that bears repeating: ''You don't throw a whole life away just because it's banged up a little.''

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Ross surrendered himself to the tale, lavishing time on the characters, getting the period details right and making the races look authentic. The result is a faithful, loving piece of work, and the love shows.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The three (human) leads are perfection. Bridges' Howard is as breezily garrulous and glad-handing as Cooper's Smith is laconic and withdrawn. Maguire's Pollard has haunted eyes and orangey hair that makes him look like a human jack-o'-lantern, and establishes his own unique rhythm and less-is-more style.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

For all its pictorial splendor and carefully calculated drama, this film misses greatness by a country mile.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Sublimely directed, scored, shot and performed, the picture misses greatness by a nose as a result of shortcomings in its script.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

Watching this movie, you get the feeling that the Depression existed so that Seabiscuit could be memorialized.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Somehow we are never quite swept into the boisterous, democratic world of which Seabiscuit, in Ms. Hillenbrand's account, was the plucky, galloping embodiment.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

Though the results are a matter of record, the uplift is nevertheless intoxicating, even enough to compensate for a film that routinely substitutes corny iconography for real imagination and vision.

Slate David Edelstein

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.

Film Threat Don R. Lewis

More than "Rocky" on a horse track. It's a moving story about people and how their lives intersect at just the right time. It's also a simple story about second chances.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

More mystical than mysterious, Seabiscuit is a proudly cornball sentimental epic -- a reverential paean to a vanished America that's steeped in inspirational uplift and played for world-historical pathos.

Dallas Observer Jean Oppenheimer

That the film is good rather than great proves a disappointment, but just finding a good film these days is rare, especially a big studio picture.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Trembles with respect for Hillenbrand's book. It's hobbled by good intentions, grand plans for telling many stories at once, and a fear of the very audience whose intelligence and sophistication it claims to court.

Austin Chronicle Kimberley Jones

Taking a cue from the horse in question, Ross’ film takes its time getting into the race, but once it gets going, the going gets good.

Premiere Aaron Hillis

For such a pedestrian exercise in Spielbergian sentiment, the somewhat stale Seabiscuit dunks into some gravy moments; the always dependable William H. Macy is three honks and six rattles of comic relief as the sound effects–happy, kooky radio reporter Tick Tock McGlaughlin, and the racing scenes themselves are spectacular.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Two-thirds of the way through, Seabiscuit awakes to its duties as a perfectly presentable race movie, rising to a crescendo of satisfying --- if somewhat gaga -- inspiration.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

The movie's secret weapons are its stellar cast, whose performances go a long way to ameliorating Ross's ham-fisted use of foreshadowing and symbols, and its brilliantly shot racing sequences -- they're heart-stoppingly suspenseful even when the outcome is a matter of record.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

It's deluxe and handsome and has no soul.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Maybe the magic will work for those who loved the book, but I found this film stultifyingly self-important and, despite the regularity with which it cuts to the chase, weirdly static.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

I found much of it as emotionally rigged as a crooked horse race.