42
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: April 12, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
62
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 40 Critic Reviews
Positive:
25
Mixed:
15
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Daily NewsJoe NeumaierApr 11, 2013
Boseman is watchful, winning and confident, but never saintly. Yet he keeps Robinson’s moral spine aligned with his skill and self-respect, showing how he needed all of those to succeed. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallApr 10, 2013
One of the all-time great sports movies — primarily because it's one of the all-time great sports stories. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanApr 12, 2013
Spike Lee wanted for years to make a Jackie Robinson film, and I hope he still gets his chance. Another take, maybe angrier or more polemic, could be fascinating, and the heroism of Jackie Robinson was significant enough to justify more than a few movies. Read full review
83
The PlaylistGabe ToroApr 10, 2013
42 is excessively retro, neglecting the urge to pepper scenes with comic relief or oppressing, flashy conflict. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanApr 10, 2013
Helgeland works in what I think of as a conservative — or maybe it's just really, really basic — neoclassical Hollywood style, spelling everything out, letting the story unfold in a plainspoken and deliberate fashion, with a big, wide, open pictorial camera eye. It's like the latter-day Clint Eastwood style, applied to material that's as traditional as can be. Read full review
80
Time OutJoshua RothkopfApr 11, 2013
The style of the film, lush and traditional, is nothing special, but the takeaway, a daily struggle for dignity, is impossibly moving. Read full review
75
Film.comLaremy LegelApr 12, 2013
A kind and decent film, but doesn't add to Robinson's legacy. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 11, 2013
Harrison plays Rickey with a jutting jaw, squinting eye and hoarse bark straight out of the Irascible Old Coot playbook, his character constantly invoking God and the almighty dollar to justify what became known as Rickey’s “noble experiment.” Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliApr 11, 2013
Unfortunately, the generic bio-pic structure of 42 prevents it from ever becoming something great. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleApr 11, 2013
A superior sports movie, dealing honestly with a great American story.
75
New York PostLou LumenickApr 11, 2013
42 may not be a home run, but it’s certainly a solid three-base hit as worthy family entertainment. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaApr 11, 2013
42 doesn't shirk from showing how daunting it was for Robinson to turn the other cheek, as Ford's Rickey tells him he must do, in the face of the insults and hostility. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsApr 11, 2013
The inspirational movie named for Robinson’s number is too dignified to throw audiences a curveball, let alone a knockdown pitch, but its solid fundamentals make it a winner. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 10, 2013
42 is competent, occasionally rousing and historically respectful — but it rarely rises above standard, old-fashioned biography fare. It’s a mostly unexceptional film about an exceptional man. Read full review
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreApr 10, 2013
Earnest, righteous, historically accurate and often entertaining. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedApr 9, 2013
It’s a perfectly unexceptional but slickly made, sincerely acted, often entertaining, sometimes manipulative and always watchable blend of action on the diamond and bravery behind the scenes that will please baseball fanatics more than movie historians. It’s a good enough biopic to make you wish it were a better motion picture. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 10, 2013
Helgeland has given us an impressive introduction to one of the most important men in U.S. history. But you can’t help wanting more. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleLouis BlackApr 10, 2013
Boseman as Jackie Robinson and Beharie as Rachel Robinson both deliver terrific performances, and the cast of managers and ballplayers – are excellent. Harrison Ford plays Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey as a larger-than-life eccentric, seeming almost like a demented Orville Redenbacher at times. Read full review
65
NPRBob MondelloApr 11, 2013
A profile in real-life courage that would be stronger as a movie if it weren't quite so intent on underlining teachable moments. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia PuigApr 12, 2013
It takes a particularly ham-fisted filmmaker to transform a fascinating and historically significant story into something as formulaic as 42. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldConnie OgleApr 12, 2013
And still 42 persists in entertaining you, even when you’re cringing, because the real story is so compelling. Read full review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenApr 11, 2013
In the hallowed frames of 42, the legend is front and centre and still inspiring. Too bad the more interesting man is nowhere to be seen. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrApr 11, 2013
The ambitious new biopic about Robinson, is better written and produced than those children’s books, but it isn’t any deeper, and that’s a disappointment. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsApr 11, 2013
Treats its now-mythic Brooklyn Dodger with respect, reverence and love. But who's in there, underneath the mythology? Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 10, 2013
Given Helgeland's rep as a screenwriter (including an Oscar for 1997's L.A. Confidential), it rankles that 42 settles for the official story. The private Robinson, who died of a heart attack at 53 in 1972, stays private. We stay on the outside looking in. Let it be. Read full review
60
The GuardianMike McCahillSep 22, 2014
Boseman hits his key scenes out of the park, making a swell couple with Shame's Nicole Beharie, while Helgeland stages Robinson's signature base-stealing with undeniable aplomb. Read full review
60
EmpireIan NathanSep 9, 2013
Already a hit in America, 42 is a well-told but square biopic doing justice to Jackie Robinson rather than exploring him. Read full review
60
TimeMary PolsApr 15, 2013
Boseman is not a hugely close physical match to Robinson, except for perhaps in the power he conveys, but he’s a great choice to play the ball player, unfamiliar enough, despite a decade of small credits here and there, to feel like an athlete, not a movie star playing one. Read full review
60
The New YorkerDavid DenbyApr 15, 2013
Sixty-six years later, when a black man holds the Presidency, equality may still be, for some, unbearable, but Robinson abruptly moved America forward. 42, however limited at times, lays out the tortured early days of that advance with clarity and force. Read full review
60
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottApr 12, 2013
Aesthetically, Helgeland's film -- while highly polished -- is straight-forward stuff, hewing so closely to the prescribed genre conventions as to border on unimaginative. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriApr 12, 2013
Helgeland’s epic about Jackie Robinson’s first year in Major League Baseball is uneven — often exciting, and just as often shallow and ham-handed — but if there’s one thing to which it remains true, it's that the almighty American greenback and the all-American athlete are the great destroyers of bigotry. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranApr 11, 2013
Robinson's combination of fortitude, restraint and passion for the game was stunning. You can't help getting caught up in this story, even as you are wishing the telling was sharper than it is. Read full review
60
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 11, 2013
It is blunt, simple and sentimental, using time-tested methods to teach a clear and rousing lesson. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasApr 10, 2013
The Jackie Robinson biopic 42 operates in a box inside of a box—and not the batter’s box, either, because that would imply it has some freedom to swing away. It’s thoroughly embalmed in the glossy lacquer of conventional baseball movies, and limited further by trying to deal with the horrors of racism in that context. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineNick SchagerApr 10, 2013
The film elevates the story of Jackie Robinson to that of cornball legend rather than just honoring his legitimately uplifting, heroic saga by telling it straight. Read full review
50
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyApr 10, 2013
Pretty when it should be gritty and grandiosely noble instead of just telling it like it was, 42 needlessly trumps up but still can't entirely spoil one of the great American 20th century true-life stories, the breaking of major league baseball's color line by Jackie Robinson. Read full review
50
VarietyScott FoundasApr 10, 2013
A relentlessly formulaic biopic that succeeds at transforming one of the most compelling sports narratives of the 20th century into a home run of hagiography. Read full review
42
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 12, 2013
The filmmaking is TV-movie-of-the-week dull and Robinson’s ordeal is hammered home to the exclusion of virtually everything else in his life. Read full review
40
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 11, 2013
What's been carefully filtered out of the film as a whole is the tumult and passion of Robinson's life. Read full review
40
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlApr 9, 2013
The movie sugars up Robinson's story, and like too many period pieces it summons some vague idea of a warmer, simpler past by bathing everything in thick amber light, as if each scene is one of those preserved mosquitoes that begat the monsters of Jurassic Park. Read full review
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