The appeal of a biopic lies in the fact you want to know about the person it depicts. I'm a massive car nut, not necessarily Ferrari, but I still want to know about him because he sure was a carismatic figure. What I don't get is why every filmmaker today thinks the first thing they need to show us about a person is his sex life.
Another problem with biopics is you have about two hours and you need to pick a part of your topics life to show the viewer. Again, your choice falls to the problems resulting from his liasons. The movie opens with the explanation how Enzo and Laura built Ferrari in 1947 out of the rubbles of WWII. Then you jump 10 years forward to the point where they already are in financial trouble. I would have much rather watched how they built it.
Now, the racing scenes were ok. But they have done it much better decades before. The accident at the Mille was a real shocking, though. The violence shown in those pictures are in contrast to the rest of the movie, which was rather soft.
Acting was decent althought I agree the accents were too thick. Let everyone speak normal englisch, that way the viewer can assume they speak Italian but it's translated for us. Doing it like this gives the impression that everyone in Italy speaks accented english. Minor detail maybe, but it really felt cliched.
Overall an OK movie but if I'm honest I wouldn't recommended it to someone who wants to know about Ferrari. And for a casual viewer it's too generic. Could have been a fictional story altogether.

Same bullshit approach as another previous movie about the life of Lamborghini. How these people take a life-story of a dude who built a world famous super car and make that story boring AF is beyond my comprehension. No automotive enthusiast starts watching these types of movies expecting elaborate scenes of the founder’s private life.

For every 1 minute of this movie where we see Ferrari working with his team discussing the building of cars and racing, we see 20 minutes of his private life related dumbfuckery. It almost feels like they shot those 1 in 20 interesting car related parts just to include in the trailer.

Penélope Cruz is one of the most overrated actresses, joined by Adam Driver who seem to have joined this movie to aim for an Oscar or something. Also, what's with the accents? Was that supposed to make the characters look authentic?

All this and the fact that the thing goes on for over 2 hours made the viewing experience somehow worse than that Lamborghini movie. No wonder this only made $35.9 million in box office after burning through a budget of $95 million. I have no idea where that $95 million went. Money Laundering, most probably :joy:.

Watch Ford v Ferrari instead of this https://trakt.tv/movies/ford-v-ferrari-2019 .

FULL SPOILER-FREE REVIEW @ https://fandomwire.com/ferrari-venice-film-festival-review-penelope-cruz-drives-an-uneven-biopic/

"Ferrari has the potential to be a memorable biopic but lacks a more thoughtful emotional focus in its performance-driven character study. Adam Driver is excellent, but Penélope Cruz clearly stands out with an emotionally devastating performance.

The dialogues between the main couple are the highlights of a globally abrupt film that deals with the deaths of people outside the family nucleus in a manner that is too fleeting and insignificant, in addition to overdramatizing a particular subplot.

Competent racing sequences. It fulfills the basic purpose of telling the story of a complex man whose life is much sadder than one can imagine."

Rating: B-

Perhaps Adam Driver thought his "House of Gucci" (2021) role would better qualify him to play the eponymous and visionary Italian motor sport impresario, but what we really end up with here is more in the vein of the recent Bradley Cooper "Maestro". Sure, there are some great re-enactments of the races - though maybe not at the beginning with Driver's faced superimposed into a car like you'd put a kid's face on a birthday card. The bulk of the rest of this is more a treatment of his tempestuous marriage with Laura (an uncharacteristically flat Penélope Cruz) and how he juggles his family - and their past tragedies - with his second family with Lina (Shailene Woodley) and son Piero (Giuseppe Festinese) about whom his wife knows nothing! The business is struggling. The production car manufacture is no longer paying for the racing cars and with bankruptcy looming, Enzo must put all of his eggs into the one basket that is the thousand mile endurance Mille Miglia and hope to win and generate extra sales. It's this last half hour that brings the film to life. You can almost smell the fumes of the engines as the cars race the narrow and treacherous roads of rural, post war, Italy. There's also an indication of the honour amongst the drivers and an awareness of the respect that they have for each other - especially as we know fatality and disaster are frequently in that cockpit too. At it's best, it's an intense and well photographed almost documentary style of film, but there's too much pointless, meandering, melodrama with a leading man who just hasn't a charismatic bone in his body. Although I didn't hate it, it was way too much about a flawed marriage and not about the engineering that made me care.