John Bramley/Walt Disney PicturesOtto Thorwarth plays Ronnie Turcotte, Secretariat’s jockey. More Photos »Diane Lane might be the two-legged star of “Secretariat,” a gauzy, gooey, turf-pounding, Bible-thumping tribute to the celebrated 1970s thoroughbred from the wonderful weird world of Disney. But the bigger and truer stars of this enjoyable, sometimes accidentally entertaining movie are the five horses that take turns playing Secretariat — one was used for running, another posed for the cameras — along with the memory of that original breathtaking beauty. This was a champion whose races thrilled the usual society swells and off-track gamblers along with a larger public swept up by the story of the big red horse who could and did.
Squeaky clean and as square as a military flattop, “Secretariat” doesn’t take the wide or long view when it comes to horse racing or anything else, despite an occasional oblique nod to Vietnam. Instead it sticks to the Disney gospel that life means following your dreams, which here belong largely to those who surrounded Secretariat in his glory years, including his owner, Penny Chenery (Ms. Lane, sincere and dulled down), and trainer, Lucien Laurin (John Malkovich, insincere and showboating). Don’t fret, though: there are plenty of pretty horses — and a few hilarious close-ups of Secretariat and a rival at the starting gate eyeballing each other like boxers in the ring — even if the triumph here is of the human spirit and not the horse.
That tale gets swishing in Denver in 1969 with Penny, immaculately dressed and coiffed, whipping something up for her four children and husband, Jack Tweedy (Dylan Walsh). One phone call later and Penny and brood are back in her Virginia childhood home, burying her mother. She stays to care for her ailing father, Chris (Scott Glenn), a horseman whose mind and farm are slipping away. After a Kodak-moment flashback of her father and her as a child, Penny determines to save her patrimony, telling her husband that she’s taking care of business, a declaration of independence that might resonate more inspirationally if the movie actually showed you how she managed to care for the farm and her children (two of whom look under 12).
But uplift is the name of the game in “Secretariat,” not little details like life. Directed by Randall Wallace with his previous lack of subtly (“We Were Soldiers”), it opens with a shot of the sky and Penny reading in voice-over a passage about horses from the Book of Job: “Do you give the horse his strength?” (That passage, in a different translation, is also used in Peter Shaffer’s play “Equus.”) The rest of the writing can be blamed on Mike Rich, whose screenplay was, as the credits put it, “suggested by” William Nack’s book “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion.” It’s hard not to think that the folks behind “The Blind Side” — last year’s inspirational about a steel magnolia of faith and a sports hero — deserve some credit too.
Alas, Ms. Lane, smoothed and nearly emptied out, doesn’t have the material or direction that Sandra Bullock enjoyed in “The Blind Side” (or the flattering costumes). Penny Chenery’s story is not uninteresting, and she certainly doesn’t appear to have been the paper doll of the movie. The real woman hired the William Morris Agency to book Secretariat’s appearances, and said of her horse-racing life, “I love the prestige, the excitement and the money.” The movie’s Penny spends a lot of time fretting and every so often stares meaningfully into Secretariat’s eyes (or muzzle). That said, in one mad, delicious moment, she does bathe Secretariat alongside his black groom, Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis, from HBO’s “True Blood”), the two humans working up quite the lather and harmonious vision to the sounds of “Oh Happy Day” (When Jesus Washed).
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