The term “Copperhead” wasn’t printed until 𝟭𝟴𝟲𝟭. Sorry, misspoke in the video!
My Harriet Review may seem like I’m trying to trash talk Harriet Tubman, but I’m not. This movie did such a poor job at just about everything!
In fact, this movie was so bad, I didn’t even want to make any of my recreations of the scenes….so be prepared for a rant 😉
What movies do you want me to review?
Transcription of Video
it’s a good thing that Harriet Tubman had God on her side because this movie did not portray her to be a very smart lady.
I don’t know where to begin here. I’m not like super like historically educated on the whole like timeframe and period area that this movie took place, but Harriet didn’t seem to really align with a lot of historical accuracy.
I felt it was much more of a movie that was trying to put over, like slavery, is bad, which it is. We don’t-I don’t know why we need to be told that. I would much rather have had a movie that tried to be historically accurate than trying to put like slavery over hardcore like….put it over his bad thing.
And like the term Copperhead. So it was this movie was like 1830s or 1840s and one of the main characters, the priest, in the nearby (church) where Harriet was a slave, said that she has to look out for the Copperheads.
And I was pretty sure a copperhead was somebody who was like against the war uh of this again that’s the Civil War and pretty sure they were like anti-slavery and I went and searched it on Britannica.com and the term Copperhead wasn’t even printed until 1861.
So I don’t know. Maybe I need to research it more, but it didn’t make sense to me. There was a lot of, like I said, historical things that – and it’s it’s hard to say because everybody’s so like touchy about this topic.
I’m wearing this hat because if you watch my Zombieland…
I should wear this one actually. If you watch my Zombieland review, I talk about how Abraham Lincoln was a doof.
And yeah, it’s like the opening scene – I mean her runaway, her escaping…she realizes they put her up for sale.
The main bad guy, I forget his name, but he was a good bad guy, but I’ll get back into it later.
But she is escaping from slavery and she sees the guy coming to get her. I don’t know how he didn’t see her. She looks up. He’s in an open field. It doesn’t show her like looking over or anything. She just looks up. There he is just walking through the field, not really like he…I don’t know where he came from.
There’s so many scenes of this movie where I’m just like none of this makes sense!
It’s like they didn’t even try. They were more worried about putting out Harriet as a person than Harriet as a movie, and if you’re gonna do that, just make a documentary. There was no point making this movie with how poorly it was done. So, she like sees him and he has no idea where she’s at.
She runs. She finds her husband, who I don’t know what he’s doing there, and they kiss and they’re hugging and I get it she’s trying to run away. He doesn’t want to run cuz he doesn’t want to lose them both or something – or she doesn’t want him to run.
So-she they are there for way too long and then the this overseer finds where she was cutting wood and then she takes off running again. She like could have run away, but she doesn’t.
She runs back to where all the slaves, which in this movie like all the slaves are just tilling the land. They just got their hoes and they’re tilling and that’s like all they do I was like ehhh-they, but well they take work in the house a little bit, but it was just like they didn’t do a very good job at making slavery look horrible. But we all know it was so maybe they didn’t have to!
But she comes back to her slave friends and she starts singing a song and they all look up everybody’s looking around like…the slaves know where she was. She’s kind of hiding but she’s not really hiding and then the overseer is just some dumb idiot who’s just looking around all over the place like “where is ya!”
He doesn’t even like think about asking them where the singing is coming-from the other slaves. He doesn’t even think about looking where they’re looking and it’s just like does nobody in this movie had any aural perception at all and it was really bugging me!
Like I said, like, I’m not saying anything against Harriet. Something she was kind of dumb because this movie made her out to be kind of stupid, but this movie really should have been a documentary. This should not have been no movie because this should have – I did double – that’s a double negative that I did not mean that!
So during her escape, during her like trials, she almost gets caught by the slave master guy. She jumps over a bridge she gets washed down a river. It’s just out of nowhere. She just wakes up and she’s on like a little sand bank. The river that she jumped into is the Delaware River, uh, Delaware River I’m guessing and it didn’t really seem like because they said was gonna be a couple days travel to get there and I don’t think she traveled quite a couple days.
It didn’t feel like it to me, but she jumps off the bridge, goes into the river, gets away, and she’s just going and then she wakes up on the riverbank. It’s just a little sand bank, but the river that she woke up next to was like like ten feet wide and was the water was moving like this fast and it didn’t look like.
I mean I don’t know rivers that well, but I just don’t think they they’re rushing and rushing and rushing and then they stop and if they do, it didn’t show like how far it was slow moving, but how did she completely wash up onto land with water that was barely moving? And if she climbed out of the water why didn’t she go into the tree line?
I feel it’s just one of those things – maybe she was so exhausted. Because she woke up and she spit water out everywhere, so did she pass out in the river? She had to have but how did she wash up on the? Like I don’t understand and the only thing that says the God put her there, but it like it’s just this whole movie is like if God was with her, this woman would not have done anything.
I mean if he was, if God was with her this whole time, that’s the only reason she was successful in this whole thing because this lady in this movie was made out to be stupid.
I’m not saying she was in real life. I’m just saying this movie did a really bad job at portraying Harriet as an intelligent person. And while she was doing her escape, at one point, there was a short little scene ten seconds not even ten, in five seconds that was showing her go pee! And I was just like “Why did we have to see that?”
She was just squatting over in the dark taking a leak and I was like…
If somebody could tell me why they showed that, I would love to know!
So eventually she gets-she gets to Philadelphia. She starts working in Philadelphia. She’s in Philadelphia for a whole year and she doesn’t learn how to read! And that was the big thing about the slave collector dude up in Philadelphia, the one who helps the escaped slaves like adjust to society and stuff.
He was just like “You can’t.”
Or maybe it wasn’t him. It was some character like “You can’t read! Like how are you gonna see signs? How you gonna read signs,” and all this stuff and if she was an intelligent woman, once she got free and for a whole year she’s in Philadelphia…she didn’t even bother to learn how to read.
Like if this-like it didn’t make any sense to me, like maybe that part is real and if that part is real, Harriet, you need to learn how to read because that’s a that’s huge!
Oh! This whole movie made her feel really dumb, like in every aspect. I don’t know what was historically accurate and what was not. I’m not saying she was a bad person at all. I’m just saying she could have used a good dose of intelligence.
At one point, the farm that she was a slave at was starting to sell the slaves because they were going broke because they’re like, all of a sudden, all the slaves everywhere were starting to escape. They were talking about selling the slaves for like six to seven hundred bucks and I just did a quick google search and that’s almost like $17,000 for a person in today’s money.
I, you know, the way they treat their slaves you would think that, I mean, historically being told that all slaves are like horribly managed and beaten and killed and all this stuff…does it make-it’s weird that if I had something that was worth seventeen thousand dollars, I certainly wouldn’t mistreat it.
I wouldn’t see the point because that’s a lot of money to me. It is! I don’t know about most people but $17,000 you could do a lot with 17 grand and is it’s just weird. Like, I don’t know about the Southerners back then but or the slaveholders or whoever, but you got a-you got something that’s worth 17 grand and you’re gonna treat it poorly. I don’t know.
And they get back to the slave master guy who at first I was like oh man, this is like DiCaprio level slave or Paul Dano slave, like, level overseer master dude here and then um after the first like 10 minute, he like went down with him.
I don’t know. He just wasn’t as tough as I thought. He just wasn’t as believable or something, but then it got to the point where he took, I believe it was Harriet’s sister, threw her up against the wall and put his hand up to her throat. But like there was no grip. He just like had her hand- his hand like right there she should have sold it more but he should have put more into it.
It just looked like he was just like “Ehhh…Where’s your sister?” and I was like oh my gosh you just killed the character for me. I mean, he just beat a woman to death he beats – a woman to death later on him in his slave tracker dude and it was just like it. I don’t know.
It’s the little things. If you like I said this should have been a documentary, but with a legit documentary, you can’t take liberties and telling a story or you shouldn’t. There are documentaries out there that do I’m sure, but he should just present facts and they-to me this clearly was a movie that was made to influence how you think about somebody by creating a story in which the story is supposed to make you think a certain way. And it should have been a documentary if that’s what they wanted to do because this is a movie. But in today’s world, people think movies are documentaries, so nobody’s gonna question this movie because they think it’s a documentary because it’s a movie and what another dumb thing in this movie and I’ll shut up because they feel like this has gone a little longer than I wanted it to.
So harriet comes and she meets her slave owner guy and his slave tracking partner good dude.
Now he’s a big old dude, black guy. And they’re walking in the forest so not a heavily wooded forest at all. It’s like pretty. The trees are like pretty thin. The leaves are on the ground and they’re on their horses and they’re walking along – riding along – and Harriet’s wearing this red overcoat she looks like Little Red Riding Hood and she walks out just out like there’s the like it’s like (beehghe) I don’t even know what I’m saying because it was so bad they’re riding along and it’s like they’re looking at their horses’ head.
They’re not neither of them are looking up neither of them have looked up cuz she is just a bright red blot in this like tan forest and she basically had to wave them down to say, “Hey! Look at me! I’m right in front of you!”
And I was like, “Oh my gosh!” like especially since they were looking for her!
But anyways, enough with Movies Are Dumb Sometimes about Harriet.
I like it. In short, this movie probably…it should have been a documentary because people will think of this movie is a documentary anyways.
Then they won’t question anything about it and especially with historical pieces…if you’re going to present something as historical facts…maybe movies that do this – they should put in the credits like some of their sources or something.
But there [are] so many thing-this would any and this movie should not have been a movie.
This should have been a documentary! I said it like eight times. I don’t care because this movie was so poorly done. I mean that really the acting was good in it. That was the strongest part of this movie. I didn’t feel like the acting was powerful anywhere, but it’s good acting.
I’m not gonna – can’t really not knock it on that – but the story and the presentation, oh my gosh!
So what did you think about Harriet? Leave in the comments below what you thought about the movie.
Do you think they should have seen the gee big giant red blot in the tan forest?
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