Wilma

Starring: Shirley Jo Finney, Cicely Tyson, Jason Bernard, Joe Seneca, Denzel Washington, Charles Blackwell, Pauletta Pearson
Directed by: Bud Greenspan
Rating: Not rated
Genre: Television, Drama, Sport
1977

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Follows the story of Wilma Rudolph (Shirley Jo Finney), who overcame childhood handicaps to become an Olympic runner.

Review:

Tim: There's no way I would normally have ever watched Wilma. It's a 1977 television movie. The reason I tracked it down 40 years after it initially aired was to see the feature film acting debut of Denzel Washington. You never know why or when you'll sit down to see a movie. I went into this with some trepidation- would it be terrible and difficult to sit through? Luckily, this is a decent movie. Sure, the production values are atrocious and the film was made on the cheap, but there's more here than you would expect. There's certainly aspects of this movie that I enjoyed. In the end, this is a decent film.

As with most of these biopics, the most interesting thing is learning about someone you probably don't know much about. I'd never heard of Wilma Rudolph, so it was interesting to learn about her life. The movie opens up with her as a child in leg braces. She comes from poverty. The odds are very much stacked against her. "This is the woman who won three gold medals for running at the Olympics?" I thought to myself. Wilma's story is interesting and although it's not handled with the care it deserves, it's still worth seeing this depiction.

Shirley Jo Finney is fine as Wilma, but her performance really doesn't give you much to be excited about. She's a completely forgettable actress. It's no surprise to see her filmography. There's not much there. She simply didn't have the required talent to bring this role to life. I honestly don't remember much about her performance. She's lackluster. I will say that I enjoyed the performance of Denzel Washington. It was shocking to see him so young. He doesn't do anything of real substance, but he got a surprising amount of screen time. There's glimmers of something there. It was fascinating to watch him in his first role. I actually really enjoyed the performance of Joe Seneca as Wilma's father. Seneca has talent- you can see that in his performance here. He might have been surrounded by subpar actors in a television movie, but Seneca has actual acting ability. It was fun watching his performance here. He makes the movie better. I have to say, though, that the best performance of the film belongs to Jason Bernard as Coach Temple. It's hard for me to describe how much I loved his performance. He felt so natural, so authentic. He was charismatic, funny, and you could get a sense of his morals and inherent goodness- this all comes from Bernard's performance. There are some powerful scenes in this film and Bernard was on full display during them. As much as Seneca's performance made the film better, Bernard's made it watchable. I so thoroughly enjoyed his performance, I can't speak highly enough about it. It was such a pleasant surprise, to sit down to this movie and not know what to expect, and to walk away feeling grateful I got to see Bernard play this role. It was so cool to see Washington's first performance, but Bernard is what I will remember most about this film.

The budget of this film hurt substantially. In a film like this, all the build up is towards the Olympic Games. Obviously, this would be the most expensive aspect of such a production. The film totally skips the first Olympics, and I think it showed the actual footage from the second one. The end result is that the movie spends tons of time on Wilma's childhood and regular life, and all but skips over the events that made her famous. I suppose you could argue this was done to focus on the person, not her achievements, but it was clearly done to save money. It felt cheap, it felt like we were cheated out of the payoff. That hurts the film significantly. By skipping over the Olympics, or just watching them like we'd see on television, we miss a vital piece of Wilma's life. What was she like leading up to her first Olympics race? Was she nervous? How did she deal with not winning? What about the thrill of victory when she medaled? What was her immediate reaction? We see none of this in the movie, so we leave feeling like there was this gap in Wilma's life that we did not get to witness. It was unsatisfying.

Wilma certainly has major flaws, but there were things about this television movie that I enjoyed. It isn't a film I will ever watch again, but I'm glad I tracked it down.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Forrest Gump, Glory Road