by Phil Janack

Settling in their seats for a special September 2 screening of the upcoming Walt Disney Co. motion picture Secretariat, due for an October 8 nationwide release, audience members in Saratoga Springs, New York, were reminded that the film was not a documentary, but your regular average movie.

In that sense, Secretariat did not disappoint. It was not bad, and it was not great—it was merely a regular, average movie.

Unfairly or not, Secretariat will likely draw comparisons to the Academy Award-nominated Seabiscuit, a movie that like the best-selling novel on which it was based explored the depth of characters and went to great effort to achieve the realism overlooked in previous horse racing movies.

Instead, Secretariat is more closely related to other Disney films such as Miracle and The Rookie, which take remarkable real-life events and add a splash of poetic license for additional dramatic effect.

Secretariat stars Diane Lane as stubborn and determined yet engaging Penny Chenery Tweedy, owner of the chestnut son of Bold Ruler nicknamed “Big Red.” Twice Academy Award-nominated actor John Malkovich plays colorful trainer Lucien Laurin, and journeyman rider Otto Thorwarth makes his big screen debut as Racing Hall of Fame jockey Ron Turcotte.

The film begins in 1969 in Denver where Tweedy is a happy if harried homemaker, scrambling to make breakfast for her husband and four children when a phone call with bad news from Virginia interrupts her morning routine. Her mother has died.

Her father, C.T. Chenery, is alive but in ill health, much like Meadow Farm, the family’s horse breeding operation. Enter Tweedy, who, despite the protests of her brother, Hollis, a Harvard economics professor, and her husband, John, slowly takes over the business, to both save the farm and herself from an ordinary housewife’s existence.

Though titled for her horse, the movie is as much or more about Tweedy and the great lengths she went to, defying the odds and a male-dominated industry, to watch Secretariat become the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

Other than Tweedy, we hardly get to know any of the other main characters aside from what we are told about them by other characters. Laurin comes across initially as prickly and disinterested; by movie’s end, he is a lovable ex-loser who burns newspaper clippings of his tough losses, once carried in his wallet, in a coffee cup.

We first see Turcotte on crutches with a cast on his ankle, his hand wrapped in gauze and his face swollen and bruised, defiantly standing up to Tweedy in their first meeting. After a disappointing loss, Turcotte meekly sits with Laurin on a bench in the Aqueduct grandstand—still dressed in his silks and holding his tack—as Tweedy rips into both men for the result.

From there, Secretariat’s magnificence in sweeping the Triple Crown races are portrayed almost as fast as Big Red ran them, which is unfortunate. There are manufactured race scenes for the Kentucky Derby and Belmont, but the Preakness is reduced to seeing Tweedy’s family back in Colorado watching the race on television.

Hardcore racetrackers will likely chuckle at seeing Secretariat race over a synthetic surface instead of dirt; the mention of “Saratoga Park” by the track announcer during one scene, as well as the way casual fans mingled in the paddock within earshot of Laurin as he gives instructions to Turcotte. One little girl even takes a picture from arm’s length away—with a flash camera, no less—moments before Secretariat walks out for a race.

There is some typical Disney goofiness, such as the slow-motion staring contest between Secretariat and Sham as they arrive in Louisville for the Derby; Tweedy standing alone on the track gazing into Secretariat’s eyes on Derby eve, which magically transforms the colt’s lethargic demeanor; Big Red eyeballing Sham again, this time in the Belmont Stakes starting gate; Secretariat relieving himself on the feet of a reporter who dared question his stamina; and another writer running down the shedrow to interview Tweedy.

Nestor Serrano portrays Frank “Pancho” Martin, the trainer of Sham, as bullying and confrontational, and the pre-Derby and pre-Belmont press conferences, which bring together the connections of both horses, appear like something you would see before a championship boxing match.

Given the availability of actual race footage, including original race calls, it would have been a nice touch, lending some realism to the film. Even today, hearing Chick Anderson say, “Secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine…” still raises goose bumps.

People leaving the screening who lived through the mid-70s felt the movie embodied the mood of the times, with Secretariat capturing the imagination of a country coming to grips with the end of Vietnam and the beginning of Watergate. Non-racing fans enjoyed the story of an owner and a horse that would not settle for anything less than greatness.

Secretariat and his connections lived up to that standard. Secretariat the movie falls short and is not likely to generate untold new racing fans, but it delivers as an entertaining family film meant to inspire with the story of one of the greatest athletes of our time and his loving owner who continues to give to the Sport of Kings.

Phil Janack is a Thoroughbred Times correspondent based in Upstate New York