Featured VOD Review: Hidden Figures

April 10, 2017

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Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures is an Oscar-bait movie, there’s no getting around that. It is an inspirational movie based on real life events that opened in limited release in December. Clearly they were going for Awards Season glory. It did earn a number of nominations, but was only able to pick up one award. On the other hand, the film earned nearly $170 million and is the biggest limited release hit of 2016. Is the film just a little too mainstream for Awards Season success? Did it deserve better on Oscar-night?

The Movie

Before I get to the film, I was hoping to get a Blu-ray screener to review; however, it still hasn’t arrived. I realized I had a VOD coupon from my ISP that I got last time I tried to cancel the TV portion of my cable / internet package, so I decided to use it to grab Hidden Figures on VOD to review, while I wait for the Blu-ray to arrive. It didn’t go quite as well as I would have liked and even pausing the video caused it to stutter when I unpaused it. I think this is because I have four windows of Firefox open, each with more than a dozen tabs active. It tends to suck up a lot of RAM and cause other programs to not function at peak performance. I was able to watch it, but I wasn’t able to watch it and take as many notes as I would like, so the plot summary is on the short side.

The film begins in 1926 in Virginia. We are introduced to a young Katherine Goble, a child prodigy who is a genius at math. She’s been accepted to attend a fancy school and is going to receive a full scholarship. They even want her to start two years early. That is just how smart she is.

We flash forward to 1961 with an adult Katherine, who is trying to get to work with her two friends, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson. The three of them work at NASA, or would, except Dorothy’s car has broken down, again. A cop checks on them and he’s surprised to learn they work at NASA. Any prejudices he had against African Americans are dwarfed by his fear of the Russians and he gives them an escort to work.

It’s a bad day at NASA, as the Russians have had yet another success putting NASA even further behind in the space race. Al Harrison, director of the Space Task Group, gets chewed out by Jim Webb for falling behind, and then again when Paul Stafford tries to correct Mr. Webb. They are still waiting for the new IBM computer to arrive, so they need someone skilled in analytic geometry, someone like Katherine. Meanwhile, Karl Zielinski requested Mary Jackson help him with the testing of the Mercury 7 prototype. This isn’t just a temp assignment either. Furthermore, Mr. Zielinski encourages her to become a full engineer, but that requires further education and the only place to get this education is Whites only. Finally, Dorothy Vaughan has been the acting supervisor for the west computing group, a.k.a., the Colored computing room, but she doesn’t have the title or the pay of a supervisor. She put in a request for an official promotion, but Vivian Mitchell, the supervisor of the White computing room, is dismissive of her concerns.

Those are the three main plot threads, but there are others. Katherine meets Jim Johnson, a military officer, and while they get off on the wrong foot when Jim questions Katherine’s ability to do math, because she’s a woman, a romance still blossoms.

Before we get to the review, we do have to talk about some of the historical inaccuracies in the movie. Nearly everything that happens in the movie happened in real life, but not in the same time frame. For example, NASA facilities were desegregated in 1958, while the movie takes place primarily in 1961. Furthermore, it was Mary Jackson who had to deal with segregated bathrooms and not Katherine Goble. The movie changed this so they could give Al Harrison a big scene where he could desegregate NASA and be a hero. It is a small issue and I’m willing to forgive it, but I prefer the way it happened in real life. Katherine Goble didn’t realize the bathrooms were segregated, so she just used the nearest, unmarked Whites only bathroom. When she was told they were segregated, she didn’t care and continued to use the Whites only and that ended segregation. Although in another historical inaccuracy, Katherine Goble joined the Flight Research Division in 1953, Mary Jackson was an engineer by 1958, while Dorothy Vaughan was made supervisor in 1949. All three stories happened. The movie just condenses all of them so they happened at the same time. It makes for a more dramatic movie that way. The movie also creates composite characters, like Al Harrison, which further separates it from reality. Again, dramatic license. I’ll let it pass.

Hidden Figures is Oscar-bait, there’s no getting around that, but it is well-made Oscar-bait that’s very inspirational. I can see this film being in some people’s heavy rotation. There is excellent acting throughout the movie. I’m not surprised it won the Best Ensemble Cast, but I’m also not surprised no one person was singled out, as the ensemble is just so strong. Octavia Spencer did pick up a few nominations for Best Supporting Actress, but didn’t convert any of them into major awards. The chemistry between the cast members was incredible; it elevates what could have been a rather standard inspirational Oscar-bait story. The film has a great balance of setting the adversity these three women faced and allows them to show their strength and intelligence, and their sense of humor. I would have liked a little more on the science, but I’m a big nerd when it comes to that. Speaking of big nerds for science, I would like to suggest the Mercury 13 as the next historical story to be adapted into a movie.

That’s not to say the film is not without flaws. The biggest of these is the ending, so spoilers... sort of. What I’m about to say is as much of a spoiler as saying, “The big boat sinks in the end.” is a spoiler for Titanic. In real life, John Glenn died in December of 2016. The end of this movie deals with the first orbital flight of John Glenn. During the flight, there is a technical problem and there is a possibility of catastrophic failure. This happened in real life, so they obviously had to include it in the film. However, they milk this scene for dramatic tension a little too much, since you know he wouldn’t die in the movie, since he just died in real life. It goes from a tense scene to emotionally manipulative, because it lasts too long.

The Extras

I don’t have the Blu-ray to review, but I was sent a list of extras with the request. Extras include an audio commentary track, multi-part making of featurette, a featurette about filming in Georgia, and deleted scenes. That’s a good selection for a first-run release. It is certainly enough to be a contender for Pick of the Week.

The Verdict

If you do not like Oscar-bait movies on a visceral level, and I do know some people who are like that, then perhaps Hidden Figures isn’t for you. It follows the formula a little too closely and I will admit that might turn off some people. That said, if you want to see a movie about people overcoming bigotry and rising above it, then this is a movie for you. Or if you just like films about the history of the space program, then this is the movie for you. Or if you just like movies filled with terrific actors giving amazing performances, then this is the movie for you. The extras on the DVD, Blu-ray Combo Pack, or 4k Combo Pack are enough to lift it from a solid purchase to a contender for Pick of the Week.

Filed under: Video Review, Hidden Figures, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Taraji P. Henson, Olek Krupa, Ken Strunk, Octavia Spencer, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali, Glen Powell, Janelle Monáe, Lidya Jewett