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
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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