credit where it's due

Loathe as I am, as always, to discuss BoxOffice numbers... well, what do you know? Defying my initial skepticism, "The Social Network" is actually doing quite well for itself - though what's most impressive and gratifying in this case is that it did so this weekend by coming out ahead of a ghastly-looking Katherine Heigl rom-com and Disney's big juicy ass-kiss to the "Family Values" set, "Secretariat."

"Secretariat," incidentally, isn't a BAD movie (it's nowhere near as vile as "The Blind Side," which is the movie it wanted to be) so much as it's an incredibly dull, uninteresting one. This is mostly due to trying to impose the "plucky underdog" inspirational-sports-movie formula onto a story where it doesn't fit - Secretariat was highly-regarded as a genetic miracle of a super-horse, and it was the MARGIN of his victories that were surprising, not the outcome - but it's also due to the self-conscious pandering to "Blind Side's" audience.

See, since the movie doesn't have an "underdog" in the horse, it has to find one in it's female owner i.e. "hmph! What's SHE doing here? Horseracing is a MAN'S sport!"... except, well, "Feminist" is still a dirty-word to the "Values" crowd; so all the conflict is muted in THIS part of the story, too: Marriage-strife kind of just "fixes itself" (in real life, they divorced), and all the grumpy-old-men "come around" without much fuss and the only real "bad guy" is the owner of the rival horse who is, of course, a swarthy "ethnic" caricature.