Cinderella Man

Long, maudlin, and bland Depression-era boxing movie from the pen of Ronnie Howard’s largely bland screenwriter Akiva Goldman (“A Beautiful Mind”). There’s a good, trim 90-minute period piece in here somewhere but everyone decided to go the Oscar-route and milk the thing; “Cinderella Man” feels like a comic book movie like “The X-Men,” in which wasting time over “back story” is mistaken for depth. Except for getting his “second shot” at greatness—a symbol for Depressed America that is so obvious it hardly counts as a symbol—the life of boxer James Braddock (Crowe) hardly seems worth making a movie over. He’s a nice guy, sure, he looks after his kids, his wife (Zellweger) supports him tirelessly, but so what? The movie’s production design is lovely, Paul Giamatti chews scenery well as Braddock’s trainer, and the last fight is nothing if not astounding. You just have to wait about 100 minutes to get to it.

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