'The Rocket' paints a slow, earnest portrait of Richard
I wrote a column a while back about 'Love Guru' star Mike Myers and his love of hockey, which in turn led to a poll on favorite hockey movies, which in turn led to a couple of readers encouraging me to check out "The Rocket," a film about Maurice Richard that came out in Canada in 2005 and had a limited theatrical run in Manhattan last year and now is on DVD at my local Blockbuster.
I checked it out Friday. It's admirably earnest, offers a primer on The Rocket for sports fans who don't know much about him and surely will cause French Canadians to swell with pride. Plus, the old-time hockey scenes are fascinating.
On the other hand, it's slow, it's overly worshipful, the English dubbing is a distraction and Mr. Richard turns out to be a man of painfully few words, in any language.
"The Rocket" is much better than "Love Guru," not nearly as good as "Slap Shot."
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Comments (2)
I never got dubbing. Hate it in fact. If I want to watch Life Is Beautiful I would gladly watch the movie in Italian with English subtitles.
There is a mostly French with subtitles version on the DVD also. Makes it more effective when the English sports writers make fun of Richard's limited knowledge of English. But in any version Richard punching out Sean Avery's character is not to be missed.