There’s an old Russian proverb ostensibly about a dancing bear: “The marvel is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all.” By this logic, The Boys in the Boat should not exist as a new Hollywood release, having too many anti-woke demerits. It’s the inspiring true story of how nine poor students at the impoverished University of Washington during the Great Depression formed a rowing crew that beat their rich Ivy League competition to become America’s team at the Hitler-watched 1936 Olympics in Germany. Adding conservative insult to liberal injury, it’s the whitest, male-friendliest studio film of the century and one in which beautiful feminine women love and support their men.
The latter elements seem so discordant in 2023, I was expecting some black woman at any point to grab the oars and show the patriarchal white boys how to row. Fortunately, the movie sticks to the riveting actual history expertly chronicled by Daniel James Brown in his 2014 bestseller, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In more competent hands, the positive, patriotic film could have been the Top Gun: Maverick of the year, but the sloppy direction by George Clooney and a lazy script by Mark L. Smith made the MGM production a frustrating disappointment. (RELATED: Hollywood Offers Two Year-End Hits)
You can sense an attempted return to traditionalist filmmaking via its old-fashioned full opening credits — a long-abandoned art that once made cinema special. Recall the magnificent main-title sequence from the classic historical Olympian epic, Chariots of Fire (1981), enriched by the unforgettable Vangelis score. Tragically, Vangelis, like all the other modern master film composers — Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, John Barry, Ennio Morricone, Maurice Jarre, James Horner — except for John Williams has passed. Alexandre Desplat’s dull score for The Boys in the Boat is nowhere near their level.
Apart from the music, the new movie’s similar flashback framing device falls intellectually far short of Chariots’, demonstrating a steep 40-year decline in respect for the audience. Actor Nigel Havers’ poetic oratory recollecting his team’s glory (“Now there are just two of us … who can close our eyes and remember those few young men with hope in our hearts and wings on our feet.”) is updated in Boat to a generic old man — supposedly lead character Joe Rantz — watching his grandson mightily row a canoe. There follows a switch to Callum Turner as young Rantz trying to get factory work in 1930s Seattle.
Turner is a major detriment to the film, trying too hard and obviously to channel James Dean. The Method — an irritating acting style exemplified by not looking at the person you’re talking to and mumbling semi-coherently — got old while James Dean was still alive. In fact, though Dean had the public heat in his final picture, Giant, Rock Hudson’s understated performance seems much more natural and realistic today in their scenes together. Turner’s attempted internalizing brings the movie down so low that his pretty co-star, Hadley Robinson, has to provide the energy for both of them as Rantz’s love interest.
The actors playing Rantz’s teammates fare better, especially Luke Slattery as the stellar coxswain. A couple of them would have probably made better leads. I read Callum Turner is being considered for James Bond. I hope he gets it and kills Bond off even more decisively than Daniel Craig did. (READ MORE: James Bond: Time to Die)
Joel Edgerton does all right as Coach Al Ulbrickson, his bombast a refreshing switch from Turner’s angst. Edgerton gets attractive visual and acting support from Courtney Henggeler as Ubrickson’s sexy wife, Hazel. The fine British actor, Peter Guinness, is cringeworthy playing a guru-like boatmaker reminiscent of his legendary namesake Alec (no relation) as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Guiness’s cliched character and words of wisdom are the fault of the muddled screenplay.
The weak script combines with George Clooney’s hack direction to sink The Boys in the Boat. Clooney has no sense of dramatic rhythm. Scenes that should be vital receive short shrift while unnecessary ones play long and die. A speech where Coach Ubrickson announces he’s replacing the varsity rowing team with the central JV crew should have been explosive, but neither Clooney nor Smith had developed the varsity team to the point that anyone cares. So, instead, a typically villainous college leader tiresomely threatens Ulbrickson.
In another sequence, a team member, Chuck Day (a solid Thomas Elms) falls sick in Berlin just before the race. Ulbrickson says he may not be able to compete, which would mean a forfeit loss. When the race starts, Chuck is in the boat, without a previous scene explaining this. You think they’re racing seven guys until counting the boys in the boat confirms the opposite. (READ MORE: Bradley Cooper Is Leonard Bernstein — And I Am Marie of Romania)
The story’s main triumphs — that of the poor yet committed boys defeating, first, the prestigious schools, then, the Master Race, are lifelessly and superficially presented. Best done are the exciting training and racing sequences, where the rowers strain past the limits of their physical endurance for causes greater than themselves — their team and their country. Given the low regard in which both young men and America are held today in liberal culture, I recommend The Boys in the Boat, despite its flaws, as a welcome antidote to leftist propaganda. After all, it’s not how well they made the movie, it’s that they made it at all.
