Movie Reaction: Harriet

Formula: 12 Years a Slave + super powers

Harriet Tubman is a badass. There's no debating that. She was an escaped slave who repeatedly went back down South, where she risked being re-enslaved, so that she could free others. Even if you are somehow pro-slavery, you'd have to admit that that took a lot of courage. On the list of real life characters who deserve a reverent hero-worship movie, Tubman ranks highly.

This is such a frustrating movie. The plot is what you'd expect. It starts with Harriet as a slave in Maryland, establishing her awful situation. It follows her on her lone trek North to freedom. She lives comfortably for a while in Philadelphia before she's pulled back to Maryland by her desire to free other slaves. As the laws get more severe and the slave hunters get smarter, the difficulty of her job increases. They contrive a movie structure onto the movie but that's pretty much all that happens. And that's plenty.

What's frustrating is how unwilling the movie was to let Harriet Tubman's actions speak loudest. This is a movie that's overly concerned with getting applause breaks. Harriet speaks entirely in catch phrases at certain points. This movie's idea of a good line is one that has to be said with a pause and a close-up. Someone should've introduced them to the Michael Bay Rule: One explosion is impactful. 100 explosions are meaningless. I wish someone would've trusted Cynthia Erivo's performance to win the audience rather than thinking they needed to give her a bunch of money lines.

More egregious is that they give Harriet Tubman superpowers. That's not a joke. Repeatedly in the movie Harriet has visions that let her see into the future and save her from getting captured. I don't care if this is even based on actual things that the real Harriet Tubman said. It's a silly idea and undercuts Harriet Tubman's greatness. Do you know what makes Harriet Tubman great? It's that she was brave and smart enough to navigate slaves to freedom; not that she had visions. My irritation is best summed up in a scene where Harriet and a group of slaves are cornered by some men hunting them. Harriet has a vision and is told by god to cross a river. The point in the rive she chooses is magically just shallow enough for her to walk through it, then everyone follows. That scene sucks. You know what scene would've be a testament to Harriet Tubman's greatness? The slave hunters think they've outsmarted her and blocked the only bridge North. Then, it turns out that Harriet is smart and good at her job and knows of a point in the river they can cross to safety. The other slaves are scared. The river looks strong and they don't know how to swim.Harriet tells them "Trust me". They do, and she guides them to safety. Guess what? That makes Harriet even more badass, doesn't rely on silly visions, and is probably a lot closer to being historically accurate.

This movie tries way too hard to be a crowd-pleaser. It forgets that the story is inherently crowd-pleasing. I understand that maybe not everyone wants to see the wonky Underground Railroad movie about the minute logistics of the system of slave liberation. I would've loved that movie, but that isn't what they wanted to do. Instead, they wanted something more like the Chadwick Boseman Thurgood Marshall movie from a couple years ago. They wanted something a little more exaggerated to underscore the significance and power of the lead character. I think they went too far though and cheapened the character and story.

None of this falls on Cynthia Erivo. She's excellent as Harriet Tubman. If she can manage an Oscar nomination from this, I won't complain. Leslie Odom Jr. is incredibly likable as Harriet's Philadelphia mentor. Joe Awlyn and Jennifer Nettles are appropriately detestable as Harriet's former owners. Janelle Monae is nice in a 100% unnecessary role that feels like it was created for her when she expressed interest in being in the movie.

I'm being overly harsh on this movie, not because I hated it, but because of how easily it could've been a movie I loved. Strong cast. Inherently compelling story. It is just way over-executed. It underlines points that are already in bold with an exclamation point. 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend