"Spirit of the Marathon" movie

DVD out in summer of 08

There were empty seats in my theater too. I think they only had a limited number of tickets, regardless of how many seats were in the theater.

I saw it here in Sacramento, CA. I would say the theater was mostly full, but not sold out. But I think it was playing at like 7 theaters here in town so we were spread out. Took my two kids (9 and 6 y.o.) and they both liked it, but they are runners too. I enjoyed it, good film. Well rounded a little bit of everything.

Jane and I thought it was very well done. Jon Dunham told me that they used 15 cameras at the marathon itself to get all those shots, which were absolutely stunning. The score really elevated the film, especially since they used a full orchestra.

Wejo is spot on that the marathon is the ultimate reality show. Spirit of the Marathon really captured it.

Pros:

I liked the Kenyan parts, Deena is so cute, and the other parts about the elites and history of the marathon were good.

Good preview of the Chicago course.

Nice to see a running movie in the theaters.

Cons:

There was way too much about the other marathoners.

Of the slower people only the old guy was likable, the other people seemed to be complainers that just wanted to do the marathon so they say they did it and then get back to overeating. Even the faster of the slow people the 3:11 marathoner guy was almost in tears when he got injured. Yeah, injuries suck but he could not seem to see all the other positive things he had going on in his life like a wife that shares his interests and a healthy baby girl. Also too stereotypical, all the slow people's knees hurt, the Kenyan guy ran 5 miles to and from school (10 miles a day a 7 years old), blah, blah, blah.

All in all was kind of like listening to you neighbor whom has run exactly one marathon in his life and will talk your ear off for several hours by giving you a blow-by-blow recount of it in painful detail.

Worst Line of the Movie (next to John the penguin’s stupidities) Dick Beardsley (who is cool) "The marathon will change your life"

No, now instead of just being a Fatso, you will now be a Fatso who once ran a marathon.

If you did not see it you did not miss much!

This response is what I expected up front from this board so I'm pleasantly surprised to see appear on page 3. If you can't relate to and understand someone else's struggle to run the marathon, then you don't know or appreciate the gift you have in being able to run them (or your a jacka** who has never actually run one faster than most of these people).

I saw the preview on youtube, and I wouldn't bother seeing it. Everything out of Deena's mouth, out of Katherine Switzer's mouth, out of Dick Beardley's mouth is exactly what you'd expect and what (I've) heard a gazillion times. Even Bill Rodgers....I love BR, but it's nothing new. It's nothing you wouldn't see in an up-close-&-personal thing in the middle of coverage of the NYC Marathon, nothing that wasn't in that PBS special a couple of months ago.

The marathon is hard? The training is hard? When Beardsley got the finish at Boston in 1982 he had nothing left in the gas tank? Phidippedes ran about 26 miles before he dropped dead? In Kenya $50,000 first place money can support an entire village for 200 years? Once you finish the marathon you feel invincible? You overcame (fill in the blank)? Thank you for telling me, I didn't know these things.

Seriously, I'm sorry, I just want something new. I want Deena to tell a dirty joke, I want Michael Moore to ask Joan Samuelson about performing the Barracuda on people when she was at college parties. It's like watching a 'new' piece about the Beatles and hearing that people thought Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was about drugs. Realllllly? They did? Wow.

As for the everyday people---I know what I went through, I know what my friends go through, I've seen the interviews with Dick & Ricky Hoyt 11 times and the 89 year-old woman who's done six marathons in the last four years....why does hearing it in a movie make it any more engrossing yet again?

I'm certainly not saying the emperor has no clothes. It's a gorgeous suit. Just that I've seen the same suit done over & over & over.

Obviously, the movie was not aimed at the small group of track fans and letsrun.com posters, so these criticisms, while somewhat accurate, miss the point somewhat.

Whether you like it or not, comparatively few people will run under 3:00 for the marathon, and more easily relate to the 'slower' runners. The movie was aimed at a larger audience; including novices, first-timers, even non-runners. So the film makers can't assume everyone in the audience will know the history of the marathon, for instance.

If you want a story about elite runners, buy 'Five Thousand Meters.' Otherwise, take this movie for what it is; a good, solid movie. Anything that can get non-runners to cheer for Deena in a movie theatre has done a great service to the running community. I was actually surprised how much elite footage they actually included!

Go see the encore if you missed it.

jaded1 wrote:I saw the preview on youtube, and I wouldn't bother seeing it...

Seriously, I'm sorry, I just want something new. I want Deena to tell a dirty joke, I want Michael Moore to ask Joan Samuelson about performing the Barracuda on people when she was at college parties. (I've) seen the same suit done over & over & over.

Thank you and LOL for what you want to see. I felt similarly unswept by the hype when I considered whether to go, but after reading these reviews, I was getting sucked in and was tinkering with the idea of going to the encore. No more. Mrs. Zeeba and I have limited opportunities for non-kid date nights and too many entertainment options (and non-running movies we want to see) to take seats away from people who will really eat this movie up. And I need to see a larger-than-life John Bingham as much as I need a another lecture from a charity marathoner about my elitism and selfishness.

We got to see an older fellow who admirably keeps chugging, 2 females who are likely one and done and the elites.

Who are the mainstays of marathons, of races? The year round runners, of course, mostly males, 20 to 49 who train to beat the clock and the most we saw of them was someone going to the bone doctor.

We could have at least been shown some of the overtraining the injured guy surely did to screw up his knee.

It was a good flick in many respects but it was likely watching a River Runs through it without fly fisherman.

i hate theaters. i'll wait for the dvd (hopefully netflix carries it).

spirited wrote:

The theater in Norfolk, VA was pretty close to a sell out. I know it was also playing in several other locations in the area and they were well attended too.

I'll bet that was the only movie in modern Norfolk history in which >75% of the audience wasn't yelling at the screen and advising the people on screen.

I thought it was good. the old guy was funny as hell. It was cool to see the highlights from the 2005 Chic. marathon with Clint Veran pacing Kastor since Verran writes my training segments. And seeing Frey and Chad Johnson and Sell.

Jayhawk wrote:

It was great except for the Penguin. What he had to say at the expo really belittles what running is all about. Even the older gentlemen who is a penguin in every since of the word wants to run faster and you have to listen to that idiot Bingham imploring the runners to take their sweet time. That's terrible.

I got the impression that they were portraying him as a stand-up comic type and that his "advice" was in jest. Note that the runners profiled basically ignored him.

Great Point! I found it boring. At the end I found similarities to mockumenteries such as Best in Show and Spinal Tap by Christopher Guest. It was comical to see them prepare for the marathon. Completely all of the cliche final preperations like eating a big plate of speghetti and preparing the race bag the night before.

We were packed in the one theater in Indy that showed it... Indy Runners sent an e mail heads up to all members so we were the predominant part of the audience.

Saw the movie with my wife and two other couples at Everett Mall Cinemas, WA. Huge theater, but not close to capacity, although the 'limited' tickets sold out. Pretty calm crowd, cheered Deena and Daniel on, sighed/laughed about the rigors of marathon prepping for the everyday runners. I thought the background profiles on each runner was good, very typical and nothing new as many posters have said, but good to see a movie about running in general out there in the theaters. I've never ran a marathon myself, but I enjoyed the film as it's about running and it did show some great elite racing scenes. Plus, Daniel throwing rocks at the hippos was great!

I am actually suprised to see so much positivity on this film. Yes, I liked the old time footage and the elite footage, but if you can only profile 6 people, they could have taken out that 1 single slow lady with the daughter and replaced her with like a 45 year woman on verge of breaking 3 hours that has a life outside of running. Something like that would have interested me more

It just seemed that the profiles were so lopsided from top elite to Gallowakers and was missing more profiles in the center.

I bet that 3:11 dude hurt his knee running 12MPH on that treadmill!

Lastly, it is nice to seeing a running film on the big screen, I was just expecting more. Maybe if that hippo got out of the water and chased a 2:06 marathoner in the deleted scenes that would have been cool to watch.

What was obviously missing from the film was the 3:11 guy training and running the race, but what can the filmmaker do? He has staked out certain people to follow through this process and one of them comes up hurt. Certainly that guys story took a turn that could not have been expected in the overall scheme of the movie. Once he is removed, the movie tilts more towards the novice runner. However, there is value there. Today's novice is tomorrow's serious runner. The grad student from Northwestern has the potential to keep running marathons and improving (her willingness to run by herself shows that). The other first timer may never do one again, but that shouldn't take away from what she did. Why belittle her accomplishment just because you can do better? She did something that she likely thought she couldn't do. Does that make her a great runner? Not necessarily, but it might make her a better person in the future. I would argue that from a storytelling perspective, she might have been the most compelling one because I wasn't sure if she would finish. That drama was needed because the others seemed like they were going to make it. Doing what you believe you can't is a powerful thing. Many of us may be so far removed from that feeling that we have forgotten how important that can be. Finally, I did feel like most of the runners in the movie thought the Penguin was silly (to put it kindly).