Movie: Million Dollar Baby (Spoilers)

This week's Netflix offering in Million Dollar Baby, one of Clint Eastwood's recent creative endeavors. This one is from 2004, and uses a reluctant trainer and female boxer as the set-up.

I want to like this movie. I want to love this movie. It's 90% great. There's pathos and emotion and psychology and deep issues. Clint Eastwood is absolutely the master of unstated backstory. There's even a side of Morgan Freeman.

But, there are also some flaws in this movie, and one of them is an absolutely show stopper for me: Maggie's trailer trash, welfare-cheating family. Oh, and let's throw in "fat" as major character flaw. Seriously, the first time Maggie talks about her family's problems, the list is that her brother is in jail, her sister cheats welfare by claiming one of her kids isn't dead, and her mother is 312 lbs. You can see where these are on par.

I was OK until we actually met them, though, and then it really goes over the top. You've got a mother complaining that her daughter bought her a house because what'll it do to her welfare payments and medicare and why couldn't she have just given Mom the money directly where it would be easier to hide from the government. I won't deny that there are some people like that who do exist, but they are such an extreme minority of the actual poor and such an extreme majority of media portrayals of the poor. This to me is a bit like watching what would be a really great classic movie, except at key points there's a terribly offensive blackface minstral show character who cannot be ignored or written off.

Then, just to really put it into "people like this don't exist at all"* territory, Mom tells the world-famous daughter who is bringing in hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of dollars that everyone is laughing at her and she needs to just find a man and live like normal people.
(* I put the little star there because I can't rule out that there are people that trailor trash who would rather see their daughter living in poverty with a miscellaneous man than being rich, famous [and generous to said people] via professional sports. But, I have no evidence that they exist.)

That, however, is my peeve. It may not bug others so much. Something you will have to suspend your disbelief for, though, is the over-protective boxing trainer. I would actually have no problem if he was only over-protective of the only female fighter he has ever trained who happens to be the age of his extremely estranged daughter. But no, he's overprotective of all of his fighters. Um, boxing trainer? Hello? "I'm going to teach you to beat people's brains out for sport, but I don't want anyone getting hurt." Does not work. It can be looked past, but it's not easy.

Finally, this is not so much a movie-killing flaw, as just a slight lament that wouldn't turn me off the movie at all on its own. The ending takes the easy way out. In doing so, it is feeding another unfortunate stereotype, one that was at least partially disproven by a well known public figure. (I'm trying to dance around the spoiler, here.)

And did anyone else groan when you realized that we have to go to Father Asshat for spiritual guidance?

So, here's what I think: between the climatic turning-point event and the ending, the movie is wonderful. (Except for the white trash family's appearance.) Takes much longer than really needed to get to the climatic turning event. So, we shorten the lead-up, put the climatic turning point event earlier, and that gives us time to do the hard ending instead of the easy one. It's going to be hard not to be smarmy with the hard ending, but there are real life people that can be used as a basis for realism. Oh, and we rework White Trash Family. I suggest Middle Class Asshats Whose Middle Child Can Never Do Right No Matter What She Does Right, myself, but I'm open to other suggestions. That would be a 10 on my movie scale.

So, what we actually got, would I recommend it? Yes, I absolutely would with the "White Trash Minstral Show" caveat. It's much easier to point out the few things that are wrong rather than the many many things that are right. Great psychological story, great subtext. It's got flaws, but it is a very good movie overall.