2023 has been the year of the biopic. The year may be the successful blueprint that could ignite a trend. Each year, several biopics are released. Some are good. Some are not. In 2023, it has often felt like a new biopic was set for release each week. Some of the better ones were The Iron Claw, Dumb Money, Oppenheimer, Blackberry, Tetris, Maestro, Air, and Sound of Freedom. At some point, there was biopic overload, with films like Golda, Big George Foreman, Rise, Chevalier, Rustin, and Nyad getting lost in the shuffle. Rustin and Nyad are receiving Oscar Buzz for leading acting performances. Yet, if not for this recognition, each film likely would have been missed by the public without even knowing the film existed.
Category Archives: Patrick Dempsey
Freedom Writers (2007)
If this movie had not been based on a true story, I would have given it a meager (we are talking less than 50%) score. Even with it based on a true story, it felt very cheesy, overly sentimental, and had way too much overacting. Its design evoked emotion and tugged at our heartstrings while making us believe that one person can make a difference just by caring. If this story were fiction, it would be utterly unrealistic. And, just because it is based upon a true story doesn’t mean that the real-life events played out exactly as they were shown in the movie. I’ve learned that “based on a true story” differs from “the following story is entirely true.” My most life-altering experience of this is Remember the Titans. When I discovered how many changes were made to make this story a more moving movie experience, I became very skeptical of Hollywood. Keep in mind that even though Remember the Titans came out in 2000, I did not know how glamorized Hollywood made it until a few years ago when I was surfing around the Internet and decided to look at the history of Virginia high school football. When I saw that the TC Williams Titans did not beat Andrew Lewis High School in the state championship game 10-7 but rather defeated them by the score of 27-0, I began to wonder what else Disney embellished in the telling of this story. It turned out that they embellished a ton. In case you are curious about some of the other inaccuracies of this movie, check out this link http://www.chasingthefrog.com/reelfaces/rememberthetitans.php. Even in 2014, when my top four films were all based on true stories, there were some inaccuracies in all four of them. These inaccuracies weren’t to the extent of Remember the Titans, but they also weren’t 100% true (especially The Imitation Game and Foxcatcher). This isn’t meant to blast movies based on true stories. Very often, these are my favorite movies. But now I do know to make sure I check out the facts of each film before I write its review. Now Freedom Writers isn’t nearly as good of a movie as The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, or even Remember the Titans, but it is based on a true story that seems a little too Hollywood to be entirely 100% true.
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