MOVIE INFO VIA ROTTEN TOMATOES:
The Boys in the Boat is a sports drama based on the #1 New York Times bestselling non-fiction novel written by Daniel James Brown. The film, directed by George Clooney, is about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.
REVIEW:
George Clooney has sunk into a sort of semi-retirement as a director with old fashion movies that go straight to Amazon or show up for a few weeks in theaters to get money from the senior age matinee crowd. The Boys in the Boat, a based on true-life story about how the 1936 University of Washington junior varsity rowing team paddled itself to Olympic gold, has all the charm, nostalgia, characters full of good old fashion gumption and charming but sexless romance these moviegoing oldsters want and can only get nowadays from stolid BBC dramas. And for some sexual titulation there’s innumerable scenes of sweating chiseled young men in shorts and either in t-shirts or shirtless, bronze sunlight bouncing off their perfect abs.
The movie in order to turn this into a true underdog story ignores the traditional American dominance in the sport. The U.S. has won gold medals in the eight man eight straight times, a frame of 36 years that goes from 1920-1956. The Ivy League schools were dominant until the Washington team coached by Al Ulbrickson (played by Joel Edgerton) won a series of surprise victories with a team of mostly middle class landlubbers..
To emphasize the stark socio-economic difference between the Ivy League haves and the Washington state have nots, the screenplay by Mark L. Smith has the main character, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) live in a Hooverville shanty, reads his textbooks via oil lamp, have a hole in his shoe that is patched with the dream house ad he tore from the paper, and frequently eating at soup kitchens. He only rows because the stint provides much needed tuition, room and board if he makes the team. The frequent radio play by play of the regattas is always emphasizing this disparity.
Clooney’s direction is pretty straight forward and bathes everything in golden auras. The cast echoes other stereotypes found often in depression era Hollywood films. Moxie is their common trait and uniting spirit. Most are pretty much silent nose to the grindstone types. Rantz and his friend Don Hume (Jack Mulhern) are the only ones that display more than monosyllabic ability. Rantz’s romance with his once long time gal pal Joyce (Hadley Robinson) is chaste with heavy echoes of Donna Reed’s and Jimmy Stewart’s courtship scenes from It’s a Wonderful Life.
Only the coxswain Bobby Moch (Luke Slattery) with his old style megaphone screams any personality beyond a playful quirk or an endearing hobby. There seems to be a history of hurt and overcoming low expectations in his barking orders. This dude has found his perfect life’s calling.
The set design, the racing scenes and the cinematography are what mainly emphasized. The production design had me swooning in its lavish attention to period detail. The regattas themselves have the spectators following the racing action via open canopy train cars. The race camerawork uses overhead shots, point of view, tracking to fully capture the action and progress. They are all cut together with a precision that emphasizes clarity, positioning and the tight action up and downs.
Politics doesn’t matters here. There are no boos or winces when Hitler shows up in newsreel footage and at the Olympics. He’s just another little known German celebrity to these college kids. The fist pounding, the grimacing, the sneering smug Fhurer is there for the audience that know the course of history. The only thing that matters is the camaraderie and the victories that grant them renown beyond their middle class existence and their underdog status.
The Boys in the Boat gets a 3.5/5 or a B+.
CREDITS:
Directed by
Screenplay by
Based on
Produced by
- Grant Heslov
- George Clooney
Starring
- Joel Edgerton
- Callum Turner
- Peter Guinness
- Jack Mulhern
- James Wolk
- Hadley Robinson
- Courtney Henggeler
Cinematography
Edited by
Tanya M. Swerling
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed by
Amazon MGM StudiosDistribution[2]
Release dates
- December 7, 2023(SIFF Cinema Downtown)
- December 25, 2023(United States)
Running time
124 minutes[3]
Country
United States
Language
English
Budget
$40 million[4]
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