Shirley Temple's second last film (she made it at the ripe old age of 21) is a slice of Americana more similar to the horsey movies they would make at 20th Century Fox. A bunch of them starred Lon McAllister, 40s leading man who specialised in country boys - and he pops up here as a jockey on Seabiscuit, the famous horse.
This movie is a nominal biopic of that horse, though much fictionalised - McAllister plays a guy based on the Tobey Maguire character from the 2003 film, Fitzgerald is the Chris Cooper character. Charles Howard, played by Jeff Bridges later, is depicted here under his real name.
Temple is a fictitious character - Fitzgerald's niece who falls forMcAllister. The relationship block is that her brother died horse racing and she wants McAllister to quit which is fine. Temple's perfomance is amateturish - she struggles with her Irish accent. Mind you it's no more painful than Fitzgerald who does his Irish thing.
There's actually surprisingly little Seabiscuit in this - he never feels like much of a character. There is some real life footage, some in black and white some in colour. There is a comic Chinese and African American.
I actually didn't mind a lot of this - it's silly but looks good and the newsreel footage does help. And t's kind of true.
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