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Seabiscuit

Generally favorable reviews
Based on 43 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 50 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by:
Gary Ross
Laura Hillenbrand (book)
Directed by: Gary Ross
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 25, 2003
DVD: December 16, 2003
Running Time: 129 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG-13 for some sexual situations and violent sport-related images
Starring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges, Elizabeth Banks, Chris Cooper, William H. Macy, Gary Stevens, Annie Corley, and Chris McCarron
The tale of a down-and-out racehorse that took the entire nation on the ride of a lifetime. (Universal Pictures)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site Official Book Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
This is grand, inspiring entertainment of a sort that Hollywood aspires to and rarely achieves.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Desson Thomson
Yes, it's that cheesy, but it's also surprisingly appealing. After all, the horse Seabiscuit really WAS that phenomenal.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
Although nowhere near the class of its equine hero, is quite a satisfying ride.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.''
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine Peter Rainer
Watching this movie, you get the feeling that the Depression existed so that Seabiscuit could be memorialized.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Respectable when it should be thrilling, honorable when it should be rough and ready.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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 effectshappy, kooky radio reporter Tick Tock McGlaughlin, and the racing scenes themselves are spectacular.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
I found much of it as emotionally rigged as a crooked horse race.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.2 (out of 10) based on 50 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Marisa R. gave it a10:
Hey Im a nineteen Year old Jockey and i have Two three year old Thoroughbred colts There names are Stryder and Arwen, Stryder is a Pallamino, And Arwen is a Buckskin and they are 16.6 hands they are vary spirited horses and they are vary competive anyways i love your Seabiscuit website anyways nice job.
Judy gave it a10:
I never really wanted to see this because I thought it would be sappy. By accident I started watching it and was glued! I loved it!!
[Anonymous] gave it an8:
Not perfect, but having a heart is surely a plus. Maguire and the horse almost perfectly mirror each other. Perhaps an underrated classic.
J. Camargo gave it a 10:
ONE OF THE BEST FILMS EVER MADE!!! Dramatic and funny the casting was great well done.
Jack P. gave it a 10:
I loved it!
Collie M. gave it a 0:
I can't believe this sentimental, patriotic and just plain ordinary film was nominted for Best Pic. It's not just Cold Mountain thats better than this, In America, The House Of Sand And Fog, Elephant are all way more daring, honest and satisfying then this...Tobey Maguire is the only good thing.
Tim W. gave it a 6:
Not up to the book, almost like a film of clips!
