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I guess you can say I would be the person holding out and causing a hung jury. I am not in the majority at all. I did not think this movie did Dale justice. I viewed the movie in the privacy of my home; the kids were asleep so I would have no distractions. My husband, who has not been a fan of NASCAR for more than 5 years, watched it with me. He was not a fan of Dale Earnhardt, matter of fact he was a Dale Jarrett fan when I met him, and since has added Dale Junior as another favorite. So in a way we had the ideal audience for this movie – a longtime die-hard fan of Dale, and a fan of his son, but a new fan nonetheless, with limited knowledge of Dale himself.

I have recently read the comments by Kerry Earnhardt and by Darryl Waltrip aka (DW). Kerry stated in an interview he conducted with KFNS of St. Louis, that he was very disappointed in how the movie portrayed his father and most of the movie was factually inaccurate. He went on to say that Dale wasn’t the way he was depicted in the movie. Kerry stated in the interview, he was never called for his input and felt that if he was or any member of his family was contacted it would have been very accurate. In his column on Fox Sports, DW said that he wasn’t happy with the way he was portrayed in the movie and how they painted an inaccurate picture of his friendship with Dale. Though they had their hard times on the track and were fierce competitors, they left it at the track; they were friendly off the track and always talked every Christmas Eve. Might I point out that both of these men did not give any input to the movie. DW stated in his column, that he was contacted by the producers to assist, but felt that since the Earnhardt family didn’t approve, it wasn’t proper for him to work on it.

I watched the movie and felt that the first 45 minutes of the movie might have been the most interesting to those diehard fans, as Dale was a very private person and his personal life was just that – personal. (I wish we could teach politicians and athletes to adhere to this rule.) So unless Dale gave an interview where he’d divulge information, you could only hear about his life outside of racing from another driver’s anecdotes or from “unauthorized biographies”. Unfortunately Dale rarely gave an in-depth interview and we didn’t know how factual or reliable other information was from other mediums. Therefore I was very interested in this part of the movie that was “before the Intimidator”.

The movie appeared chopped up and very rushed. Although it “aired” for 2 hours, it was only 90 minutes in length. How can you cover 50 years of a man’s life in 90 minutes – especially the many moments in Dale’s life and career that was of interest to his fans and the new fans of NASCAR itself? The second part of the movie (the “Intimidator” part) was even more rushed and further chopped up. Many times they forgot to tell us what year they were talking about and thus presented stories that appeared to many of the fans “very inaccurate”. They skipped years and even appeared to skip decades but failed to mention that to the viewers. While the fans knew which race they were talking about or showed, the part of the story that connected the races – Dale’s personal life – didn’t connect to the race without telling us which year this was supposed to be. This played an important part when Dale interacted with Dale Jr., it made these scenes implausible due to known facts of Dale’s life and what happened or was said at particular races. Even my husband was able to pick up on several fallacies in the second half of the movie. A particular scene comes to mind when Dale went to see his son after suffering a nightmare which was shown right after they showed the Daytona 500 in 1998. The music picked for Junior to be listening to was a very popular tune, but a tune that was not released until 2000. However it was made to appear that the timeline was still shortly after Dale’s victory at the Daytona 500. In this same scene, Dale told Junior to make sure to wear the head restraint system. Junior said yes sir. I know this was a “movie” and they would use creative writing, but this did not have to be said as a mode of foreshadowing. Every person knows what happened to Dale in 2001 and we know that the head and neck restraint devices were made mandatory after his death because it could have helped save his life and maybe others in the past and future. However, we also know that Dale would have been one of the last ones to wear such a device, and I personally do not believe (without hearing it from Dale Junior himself or a member of his family) that Dale would have asked his son to wear something he himself would not put on, for safety or not. It was not widely used and most drivers were reluctant to even test the HANS device at that time.

Many reviewers of the film – fans and “experts” alike – stated they thought Pepper’s performance as Dale was almost flawless and so like Dale. I disagree! In the day and age of movie magic – the likeness should have been “dead-on” and the makeup and prosthetics were so “off” it was almost comical. Pepper’s voice didn’t even portray a fake bad Southern accent. The only things that reminded me of Dale were his moustache and the words he said, but then again they were Dale’s words (or some of them anyways – the one-liners or quotes said so often we know he said them). Although one of the most famous one-liners Dale said was stated at Bristol after spinning out Terry Labonte, however in the movie, it was associated with Dale having an encounter with Waltrip. This was bad placement as that was a very well known quote – don’t change history to make a better movie, it makes it worse.

Also I noted that Pepper in the Goodwrench uniform was comical. I am sorry to say, but I have seen countless hours of Dale in that uniform and believe me his butt filled out the uniform nicely, whereas Pepper’s was almost non-existent. A minor fact I know, but believe me, female fans KNOW this. In addition, the uniforms that were on his crew weren’t even remotely close to the team uniforms. The race footage intertwined in the movie was perfect because it was real. However when they went back to the movie parts, the car was all wrong, cameras were in spots they wouldn’t have been in. I could go on, but to put it mildly, I was appalled with the racing sequences that weren’t real footage.

I won’t even comment on the horrendous casting of Ron Prather playing Childress or Greg Thompson as Darryl Waltrip. It’s amazing that Childress and many others were hardly mentioned in the movie, and we all know how close Dale was with Richard, Rusty, DJ and others. At least the actor playing Humpy Wheeler looked very similar to him in the early days. I do have to say the Chad McCumbee who portrayed Dale Junior in his later years (as a NASCAR driver) was almost dead-on perfect. Except for the goatee which wasn’t quite the proper color and a few facial differences, I almost felt like I was watching Dale Jr. for real. I have followed Junior since the very beginning and was amazed at how well McCumbee did in portraying him. I even had my back to the TV during one of the many replays of the movie, and when I heard him speak as Dale Jr. I had to turn because I could have sworn my husband had changed the channel to a Dale Jr. interview! Not once did I do that when Pepper was speaking.