GetPapa Far from Perfect, Far from Terrible

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Orla Zuniga It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Sam B Horse racing is part of my life! As a huge race fan and handicapper I was so glad that ESPN funded this movie! Ruffian was the greatest filly ever to step on to a race track, bar none! This film did portray how good she was and did tell the true story of this race horse. Thought the cast was good and I liked the fact the movie was about the horse and the horses relationship with its connections. NOT! Like Secretariat! Which was a good movie, but! Secretariat was more about Penny Chenery-Tweety then it was this generations greatest race horse (male horse that is). If you actually looked at Ruffian's past performance sheet is all 1's ! Always in the lead and never gave it up.. The only time you see a 2 the tragic match race that killed her. Ruffian did not have good family lines when it came to being perfectly sound.. her Dam (Shenanigans) had bone issues in her front two legs and unfortunately that passes down..One thing they did not (or at least I didn't see) was a HUGE omission from the pubic as to why she broke down. If you look at the actual race footage there was a seagull on the track and as the two horses raced closer to the stupid bird the bird flew away. The footage reviled that Ruffian actually was looking at the bird as she races and had one bad step and it as over. Many Many people believe that if the at stupid bird was not there Ruffian would have won the race against Foolish Pleasure and may have had a massive career in front of her.. Will never know! Good movie. Heartbreaking. And one of my favourite scenes was right at the end when you see Frank Whitley look at the new 2 year olds being taken out of the carts. You see that look on his face that he knew he had one in a million horse a year earlier in Ruffian and there will never be one like her again. This is very true in horse racing!! Its like winning the lottery.. One in a million chance that you get a horse that can defy belief .. Thats whats so great about the sport! 30,000 foals are born each year. 20 make it to the Kentucky Derby at 3 years old and only one out of those 30,000 will go down in history.

bsmith3366 More annoying to me than the horse racing inaccuracies were the portrayals of journalists who covered Ruffian. This was 1975 -- not 1935. Snap-brim hats with "Press" cards stuck in them were long gone by the 1970s. And the newsroom at Newsday, Nack's employer, was a joke. The place looks like it's a weekly, with perhaps five people working in it, rather than a major paper with a circulation of several hundred thousand and hundreds of reporters and editors. And there's always only one editor around. Moreover, Nack's desk, which for some crazy reason has an adding machine on it, is nearly empty and spotless -- which could never happen. And he has a 1950s vintage manual typewriter. Even in 1975, most big newspapers had electric typewriters. Getting the little stuff right always helps to make the big picture better.

John T As an avid fan of Thoroughbred horse racing, and someone who followed Ruffian's career including witnessing her final race, I was pleasantly surprised by this made-for-TV film. Earlier in the day, the ABC network broadcast the Belmont Stakes in which viewers saw the unique character befitting many of the long-time sportswriters who cover Thoroughbred racing. Unfortunately for the film, Frank Whaley failed to deliver that persona in the key role of sportswriter Bill Nack. However, Sam Shepard in the starring role of trainer Frank Whiteley gave a most believable performance, capturing the real life trainer's restrained professionalism. While the film's setup for the Sorority Stakes was good, I would like to have seen more background as a lead into each of the races depicted. The writers capably demonstrated how the horse, even against the wishes of its trainer, was secondary to "filling the stands" for the moguls of the racing industry. To his credit, French-Canadian director Yves Simoneau did not overly dramatize the horse's final moments, instead, effectively borrowing the eye/lash closeup created by Krzysztof Kieslowski in his French-language film, "Trois couleurs: Bleu"

qatmom Movies hardly ever get horse racing right. Seabiscuit was the closest approach I have seen, but even that movie had problems. Ruffian is loaded with problems.WHY WHY WHY do movies with racing invariably confabulate odd little human subplots that anyone with any knowledge of the sport knows are pure hokum? I do KNOW the sport, having raised, handled, and raced my own horses, and having written about the sport professionally. The actual history of Ruffian was compelling enough without the make-believe elements of this movie.The horses used to portray the title character were some of the coarsest, plainest beasts imaginable. Ruffian--the real one--was a tall, nearly 17 hand filly, quite leggy and graceful. With all the cast-off TBs available for purchase on a per-pound meat price basis, couldn't at least one been found for close shots that did not look like a chunky pony??? I am sure that many people in racing would have cheerfully advised the movie's makers on details, gratis, just to be sure things were not gotten laughably wrong. The notion that Claiborne Farm, in the 1970s, shipped horses in a rusty beige trailer with "CF" on the side is silly. Claiborne was and is one of the last remaining family, multi-generational outfits, and has been involved not just with foaling and raising good horses, but in shaping and influencing the breed globally. It is not a marginal operation without presence or reputation. Go to the farm, and note that the gates, the (very large) water tower, the trim on the main stallion barn--are all painted Cadmium Yellow, the farm colors. Rusty beige trailers? Pulled by aged pickup trucks? I think not.This was a FICTIONAL movie appropriating the name of a real filly, and beyond that, not much more. It was never really explained why Ruffian was extraordinary--the movie makers seemed confused between stakes record time and track record time--or that she had an average winning margin of 7 lengths after 10 races, or that there has never been anything like her since, and in what seems a glaring omission, there was no hint of all the advances in caring for catastrophic breakdowns since 1975. Foolish Pleasure's reputation was inflated beyond what it was at the time--he was a good 3-y-o, but not a great one, and he finished his days in obscurity, pasture-breeding mares somewhere out west.No wonder Frank Whiteley and Jacinto Vasquez sought to legally block the airing of this movie without adequate disclaimers.