‘On the Basis of Sex' Was a Glossed-Up Disservice to the Life of RBG [Re-Release]

In the wake of her passing last Friday, Focus Features has decided to re-release the 2018 Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic “On the Basis of Sex” in select theaters this week.

Back in 2018, I had high expectations for Mimi Leder‘s film, and yet, I can't think of more appropriate and failed Oscar-bait than this mediocre project. The fact that the film has been nary mentioned in the last week or so only reinforces the very little impact it has had on the zeitgeist.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was played, in straight-shooting fashion, by British actress Felicity Jones. Natalie Portman was originally cast as RBG, a better pick in my view, and the strain in Jones' performance was all-too-apparent.  Bader's distinctive Brooklyn/Jewish accent is butchered by the actress as it awkwardly goes in and out of tune throughout the film. Although, if Jones were given a better script then maybe, just maybe, she would have been able to stretch her talents a little further, alas, what we got instead was a none-too-bright and conventionally rendered film that lacked any sort of subtlety and resorted to manipulative sentiment.

Armie Hammer was Ginsburg’s attorney husband Martin, a man who stood by his wife's side as the rest of the world shunned her abilities as a legitimate female attorney. Leder’s film concentrated heavily on their relationship and covered around 15-years in the life of RBG. The crux of the film, more or less, had to do with her studies at Harvard Law School in ‘56 (when RBG was 23) and ended with her landmark case arguing gender discrimination on behalf of the ACLU in the early ‘70s.

That lack of subtlety in the screenplay transcended beyond the leads and into the supporting cast of characters as well, especially the men who were, with the exception of Hammer's loving husband, caricatured and played like sexist cartooned men. Was that how it was back in the 1950s and 60s, maybe, I don't know, but the amateurish nature of these characters did a major disservice to the entire film.

I was skeptical about Leder being attached to this film, she's the director who gave us the likes of "Deep Impact" "Pay it Forward," and "The Peacemaker," yikes, and my hesitations were more or less confirmed with this film. Leder is still stuck in '90s blah mode. The direction was rather artless, there was no vision in the direction, nor was there any effort to try and surpass the Lifetime-movie sensibilities of its mise-en-scene. Just stick with Betsy West and Julie Cohen‘s "RBG," the highly popular documentary about Ginsburg’s life and career,  which is a much better movie. [C-]