2023 ‧ Sports Drama ‧ 124m
George Clooney goes back behind the camera to give us a crowd-pleaser. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name, The Boys in the Boat tells the story of a University of Washington junior varsity crew team beating the odds and competing in the 1936 Olympics.
Joel Edgerton gets top billing as the crew coach, but Clooney focuses on Joe Rantz. He is our audience surrogate and the de-facto protagonist in this largely ensemble film. Rantz, played by Callum Turner, is an engineering student who needs a job and finds out that the crew team pays. We see how grueling the tryouts are and Clooney does a good job conveying the physical burden rowing involves. The film’s three acts are structured around important competitions for the team. Folded into the plot is Rantz’s romance with a girl from back home also at UW, which any Seattle local will tell you is pronounced “U-Dub.” Though probably true to life, the relationship seems perfunctory and does not add much.
We’ve seen stories like this before, and the audience knows basically everything that is going to happen from frame one. A ragtag group of scrappy novices overcome the odds. There is no deviation from that formula. Considering Clooney’s previous directorial choices, The Boys in the Boat seems an odd decision. The story does not have the edge of his previous films. When the crew make it to the Olympics in Berlin, there is a moment with Jesse Owens, which feels obligatory. Perhaps Clooney is saying something there, but the film focuses so much on the idyllic past that any message would be muddled at best.
Clooney does succeed in technical merit. The rowing scenes are shot with a good visual flair and the editing is tight and exciting. It excels in the not easy task of getting the average person to care about crew. Though a sports drama, and it has many of the associated tropes thereof, it feels more in tune with 1990s crowd-pleasers like October Sky and Mr. Holland’s Opus. The performances are good, if not exactly award worthy. Turner and Edgerton are engaging leads, but the standout performance comes from Jack Mulhern. Who probably has less than a hundred words of dialogue, but does a lot with what little he has.
The Boys in the Boat is in many ways a standard issue triumph over adversity film. Nothing particularly bad about it, but nothing remarkable either. It’s a nice time at the movies. There are worse ways to spend your time.
Grade: C+
~Andrew