His career as a director has seen George Clooney concentrating primarily on American Nostalgia, from the TV-centric “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” and “Good Night, and Good Luck” to the 1920s football sports comedy “Leatherheads” to the World War II thriller “The Monuments Men” to the 1950s-set “Suburbicon” and the 1970s coming-of-age memoir “The Tender Bar.” For Clooney’s ninth film, he once again reaches into the past for the sentimental and occasionally rousing but disappointingly bland and by-the-numbers sports biopic “The Boys in the Boat,” which tells the true story of the underdog University of Washington’s rowing team and its quest to win gold at the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin.
Yes, those Olympic games. The Jesse Owens games. Cue the cameo appearance by Owens (played by Jyuddah Jaymes) to remind these strapping lads that even though they’re mostly from working class or dirt-poor backgrounds, they still have it much better than a Black man in America. Also cue the obligatory shots of Hitler in the stands, scowling like a petulant child when things don’t go Germany’s way.
If that isn’t enough of a stacked deck, how about a score from the prolific and gifted Alexandre Desplat (“The Queen,” “The King’s Speech,” “Argo”) that pounds home every emotional beat? It’s not that “The Boys in the Boat” doesn’t have an inspirational impact; it’s that we’re so aware of being pushed in that direction.
First though, we have the well-filmed and well-acted but formulaic sequences leading up to that Climactic Race pitting the USA against rivals including Italy and Germany. Adapting the non-fiction book of the same name by Daniel James Brown, director Clooney and screenwriter Mark L. Smith adhere to the essential truth of the story while ladling on the warm, glowing, “Chariots of Fire” sentimentality.
Callum Turner, looking every bit the rugged, old-timey movie star, does fine and steady work as Joe Rantz, who has been on his own since he was 14 and lives in the shell of an old car on the outskirts of Depression-era Seattle. Joe has enrolled at the University of Washington with dreams of becoming an engineer, but he’s in danger of getting kicked out if he can’t find work and make enough to pay tuition. Joe’s buddy Roger (Sam Strike) tells Joe about the upcoming tryouts for the men’s eight rowing team, and even though Joe has zero experience in the sport, he decides to give it a go because team members are given a place to stay and a salaried job.
Enter the always solid Joel Edgerton as the stoic coach Al Ulbrickson, who’s kind of like the Knute Rockne of rowing mentors, telling the hopefuls they’re about to experience the most grueling workouts of their lives and that eight-man crew “is the most difficult sport in the world,” but if they can meld together as one perfectly synchronized machine, rowing is pure poetry — and cinematographer Martin Ruhe provides one sun-dappled, gliding shot after another to back up the whole poetry thing.
There’s no denying the beauty and power of the sport as we follow Joe’s journey. He makes the Junior Varsity team, which quickly supplants the senior squad as the University of Washington’s best hope to represent the United States in the Olympics. (One cool and historically accurate touch: Spectators could follow races by boarding “Observation Trains” outfitted with grandstands on flat cars.)
Much like the eight-man crew itself, the film moves forward in methodical and at times almost mechanical fashion, checking off the boxes in nearly every underdog sports story. Most of Joe’s teammates are so thinly drawn they’re practically interchangeable, save for a few broad brushstrokes, e.g., one fellow is painfully shy until he displays a surprising musical gift, a bully is hiding a secret, etc. There’s a sweet romance between Joe and his grade-school crush and now fellow U-Dub student Joyce (a vibrant Hadley Robinson), but it’s so old-fashioned you almost expect a scene where the two of them sing “Buffalo Gals” and Joe promises Joyce he’ll lasso the moon for her.
The screenplay peppers in a few speed bumps, including the squad needing to quickly raise the funds to pay their own way to Berlin, and a key team member getting sick at the worst possible moment, but there’s little suspense, given the story took place, well, in 1936, and was so famously chronicled in Brown’s book. This is the kind of film I’m just short of recommending; that is to say, if you’re just looking for some comfort-sport viewing devoid of heavy dramatic lifting or surprises, “The Boys in the Boat” will do just fine. Just that though.
