Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

bkoganbing Although the fine version from 2003 about Seabiscuit that Jeff Bridges and Tobey Maguire brought to the screen is far more factual, this B film that stars Barry Fitzgerald and Shirley Temple should please fans of the sport of kings. Considering what the costs are to maintain horse racing as a sport only royalty or those considered royal in their societies can afford to participate other than at the $2.00 parimutuel window at the track.For reasons not quite clear Barry Fitzgerald together with niece Shirley Temple are brought over from Ireland because stable owner William Forrest has heard of Fitzgerald's legendary ability to judge thoroughbred horseflesh. Of course that brings him into contact with Donald MacBride who is already Forrest's trainer and they disagree over a yearling that Fitzgerald sees promise in and MacBride doesn't. Barry leaves and goes to work for Pierre Watkin and Rosemary DeCamp and later on they acquire the horse now named Seabiscuit. A young jockey played by Lon McCallister, the part Tobey Maguire played in 2003 is interested in Shirley Temple and the fictional romance doesn't interfere with Seabiscuit's legendary exploits on the track. Newsreel footage of the famous match race with Triple Crown winner War Admiral is shown in its entirety with Clem McCarthy's famous call of the race. Including McCarthy who was one of the great sports announcers of all time really captures the flavor of the period. McCarthy's voice is also the one covering the famous second and very short Joe Louis/Max Schmeling fight. Horse racing was his first love however and McCarthy covered and called every major race in a 20 year period.It's not as good as the newer film, but The Story Of Seabiscuit while its characters are superficial does capture the racing scene of the time.

david_weinstock when the truth is so much more interesting, this movie was pretty much a waste of time. the real characters were also more interesting than these two dimensional characters. the only redeeming quality was the newsreel footage of some of the actual races. fortunately, the recent Laura Hillebrand book and the recent movie corrected some of the nonsense. in real life, the great Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, Charles Howard, Tom Smith, and even Red Pollard were all much more interesting characters than those in this stinker. perhaps there were problems getting the rights to use the real names of real people who were alive at the time of filming. there is no doubt that Shirley Temple was very cute when they made this abomination, and probably was cuter than Red Pollard's own wife, the nurse. There was also no need to use such lame stereotypical characters for the non-white cast members. for a degenerate race track gambler like myself, the racing footage was worth enduring the rest of it.

ProgShred I was always in awe at Shirley Temple's amazing talent as a child and always wondered what kind of adult actor she would be, then TCM showed this movie and I got the chance to see for myself.Her acting here is kinda hot and cold. There are some scenes where she's brilliant, while in other scenes she just seems to read the lines without much feeling. Still, she was good enough to make me want to see more. It's a shame she didn't do much film work after this one. I think she would've been a major sex symbol.The rest of the movie was kinda boring and predictable. When they showed the original racing footage, they did the whole racetrack scene in B&W. I thought it was funny how they went from the hospital room in color, to looking at a racing form, then to everyone at the race track in B&W. I thought it was funny because I'm sure they were trying to make it almost unnoticeable by using the racing form as a go between. I would have left the footage out of the movie and done the scene in color.There were two things about the love story that I thought were interesting. I thought that Ted fell in love with Margaret too quick, then after Margaret refused to let Ted kiss her, she kisses him with a bunch of pecks all over his face, followed by one planted on the lips.

jim_brown-green I remember this movie from my childhood and recently saw it on cable. What I don't understand is why do I remember this very forgettable film. It's really a loser. The horse(s) who played Seabiscuit get the highest acting credits from me. And Rosemary is always deCamp!