Save for The Ides of March, no feature directed by George Clooney has been set in the present—and only 2020’s The Midnight Sky took place in the future. Behind the camera, Clooney has a fondness for nostalgic period pieces, and he continues humoring it with The Boys in the Boat, a dewy-eyed based-on-real-events sports saga whose bland conventionality is epitomized by its generic title. On the way to its triumphant finale, the filmmaker’s latest (an adaptation of Daniel James Brown’s non-fiction book) hits many of the right feel-good notes. Unfortunately, it also strikes a lot of discordant ones, neutering most of its attempts at rousing inspiration.
The story of the University of Washington rowing team that bucked expectations to win the gold medal at the 1936 Olympic games in Nazi-controlled Berlin, The Boys in the Boat (in theaters Dec. 25) starts strong, with cinematographer Martin Ruhe’s images of the sun-dappled water melding seamlessly with shots of rowers’ hands, arms, and bodies moving in time with the current. Alexandre Desplat’s accompanying musical compositions lean into the sequence’s melodramatic atmosphere, the result being a form-content synergy that establishes rowing as a sport predicated on the harmony between man, craft, instrument, and nature. Better still, Clooney achieves this without any exposition that might make such notions obvious and turn the proceedings leaden.
Alas, working from Mark L. Smith’s script, Clooney can’t resist telling as well as showing for long. On the water, respected Washington coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) explains that all crews covet “swing”—the state of rowers being in perfect unison—and that “most crews never find it. But when they do, rowing is more poetry than sport.” In case that point wasn’t clear enough, the film concludes with another team member reminiscing wistfully about his buddies, “We were never eight. We were one.” Though synchronization is vital to these athletes’ success, Clooney’s habit of demonstrating something visually—occasionally beautifully—and then complementing it with a ham-fisted pronouncement is par for the material’s course, and constantly interferes with the lyricism he seeks.
The Boys in the Boat is about a ragtag group of young men led by Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), who’s effectively been an orphan since the age of 14 and currently sleeps in a dilapidated old car on the outskirts of Seattle. Joe is late on paying his tuition bill and, thanks to a tip from his pal Roger (Sam Strike), he decides to try out for the university’s rowing squad, given that members get a place to stay and a salaried job.
The odds are stacked against him, but as embodied by Turner, Joe is the sort of stout, handsome fellow who looks like he’s never lost a day in his life. Thus, it’s not difficult to believe it when he makes the final cut alongside Roger and a group of similarly clean-cut guys who, in most instances, are never fleshed out by Smith’s screenplay. Joe is as attractive as the film, and just about as skin-deep, and while impressing coach Ulbrickson takes considerable effort, finding love does not, as his grade-school crush Joyce (Hadley Robinson) figuratively falls into his lap, boldly flirting with and swooning over him like a gift from heaven.
If Joe seems to have it made, The Boys in the Boat takes pains—from an early close-up of him putting on a boot with a hole in its sole, to a later encounter with his deadbeat dad (Alec Newman)—that he’s had it rough, and it pits him and his compatriots against adversaries (first the University of California, and then Hitler’s German outfit) who are positioned as wealthy elites who use their privilege to unfair advantage. It’s impossible to miss the persistent class-warfare dynamics, and yet for all its clumsiness, Clooney’s film does sporadically tap a pleasurable old-school vein. The director’s tale is an unabashed celebration of meritocracy, with hard work and persistence presented as the keys to silencing doubters and overcoming adversity, and its belief in the American Dream (and character) is hokey, sincere and, at times, moving.
Whenever it begins to stir the heart, though, it manages to stick its foot in its mouth. “Winners make our own breaks in life,” says a callous administrator. The crew’s coxswain Bobby Moch (Luke Slattery) motivates his teammates to give it everything they’ve got “for all the people who didn’t believe in you!”
The in-your-face declarations never stop, and they peak with Washington’s showdown against well-funded California. According to radio announcer Royal Brougham (Chris Diamantopoulos), the regatta is “as much a social experiment as it is a race. A clash of character. Old money versus no money at all. Six boats of want-tos against one filled with have-tos. These nine working class boys arrived from the American West on the shoulders of a country that sees itself in their determined young faces. Sees their struggles, their grit, their spirit. And they’ve claimed the Husky Clipper as their own. Because it’s a boat full of underdogs representing an underdog nation. A nation of people who have been beaten down but refuse to go away. Refuse to stop working hard, because that’s all they know. All they’ve ever done.”
Got it? At such regular intervals, The Boys in the Boat goes Velveeta-grade gloppy, and not helping matters is the fact that none of its protagonists have been conceived in interesting dimensions. Edgerton is the fiery coach who’s risking everything on his JV squad, Turner is the poor kid struggling to prove himself (and to show that he won’t quit like his old man), and Peter Guinness is the boat-making saga who serves as Joe’s surrogate grandfather figure and who talks about how, when a crew is really humming, its sweat seeps into the boat and creates, you guessed it, harmony.
Clooney apparently assumes that rendering them all as stock types is enough to keep the film moving briskly toward its preordained conclusion. He’s almost right, at least insofar as it’s in keeping with his interest in throwback mythologizing. There’s a difference, however, between sweet and cloying, poignant and insistent, and too often, The Boys in the Boat falls on the wrong side of that divide.
