“The Boys in the Boat,” the latest sports movie from George Clooney, is currently showing yet another Rotten Tomatoes skew you could drive a Mack truck through—Critics: 56-percent, audience: 96-percent. Why is that? More on this later, but I’m telling you right now; it’s an excellent family film.
George Clooney’s a big believer in the U.S. of A. In his movies, he appears to have made it his mission to remind the American citizenry about what originally made the United States great: “Good Night, and Good Luck” was about integrity, “The Tender Bar” was about loyalty, and “The Monuments Men” was about nobility of purpose. “The Boys in the Boat” is about one-for-all-and-all-for-one selflessness.
The Boys in the Boat
Based on the nonfiction book by Daniel James Brown about a real-life tale of grit and pathos, “The Boys in the Boat” is set in the mid-1930s, as the Great Depression continues to ravage the working class.A tow-headed, rawboned, homeless young man Joe Rantz (Brit actor Callum Turner) who eats meals out of cans in the burned-out hulk of the Model-A Ford where he lives, has somehow managed to matriculate into the engineering school at the University of Washington.
Struggling to pay tuition, he tries out for the school’s junior varsity crew team—word’s out that rowing crew will provide food, lodging and a stipend. The tryouts for a seat in the eight-man rowing shell are seriously grueling, and the training is brutal. But, this was back when Americans weren’t afraid of hard work, and so the literal and figurative hunger this young athletic squad feels forges them into a force to be reckoned with.
Underdogs
“The Boys” is a classic sports underdog tale, with the hungry, poor boys going up against the well-fed rival rich kids of entitlement, affluence, and privilege, and the coaches making snarky remarks about the ability of the big Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale to dominate the sport: “That’s what money gets you.”
Familiar underdog sports movie tropes are to be found in the tough coach with a heart of gold, Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton); both Joe’s best bud (Sam Strike) and girlfriend (Hadley Robinson) basically exist only to orbit around him; and then there’s the “We need a win right now!” pressure from college admin. There’s also the elder George Pocock (Peter Guinness), who hand-manufactures the wooden sculls and sprinkles profound tidbits of wisdom here and there.
My favorite elder-wisdom tidbit comes when the coaching staff are standing around wracking their brains after trying every permutation and combination of seating arrangements and having it fail to pull the crew out of a potentially fatal plateau. Said elder boat-builder chimes in with: “You know, sometimes the young horses, they don’t really hear too well yet. Sometimes they just need a louder jockey.”
And so a new, cocky, loud-mouthed coxwain (Luke Slattery), who, although diminutive, has enough swagger and ego to challenge the coaches in calling the races—is brought in. And the team is finally, er, off to the races.
8-Man Crew Appreciation 101
There are many crew movies out there; the most recent prior to “The Boys in the Boat” is “Heart of Champions.“ But, Clooney’s contribution to the genre has a fun breakdown of who does what in the boat. I didn’t realize that just like how ball sports all have various positions, so does crew.For example, in the eight rowing positions in a racing shell, the athletes in positions 1 and 2 are the “bow pair.” They tend to be lighter than the rest of the team. Their job is to balance the boat, and they’re required to have a smooth, fluid technique.
Positions 3 through 6 are known collectively as the “engine room.” This is where the four big, brawny boys with giant lat (back) muscles, Popeye forearms, and serious hauling power reside.
Seats 7 and 8 are the “stern pair,” and position 8 is called the “stroke.” He is usually the most talented racer in the boat; capable of setting a powerful rhythm that’s easy for the rest of the boat to follow. The stroke and the coxswain have a strong working relationship and are very in tune with each other, in order to keep the 60-foot long, 220-pound shell (that’s capable of carrying crews weighing as much as 1,800 pounds) going at a blazing speed.
Beating the Nazis on Their Own Turf
George Clooney, as evidenced by his movie “The Monuments Men,” would appear to hate Nazis, which might be why he picked this true story to tell. The team eventually ends up in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in time to send Der Führer packing, in disgust and humiliation, out of his own stadium.I suspected that one reason for the dearth of critic support might be that “The Boys in the Boat” has only one black face (Jesse Owens) in a sea of white faces; I expected that would trigger a certain kind of response, and sure enough, I found (from a white critic):
“Clooney cooks up this cornball soufflé with plenty of ham, plenty of cheese, a piled-high side of white bread and white milk to wash it down.”
I personally found it a refreshing about-face in the trend of Hollywood to placate all the races with “diversity.” “The Boys in the Boat” is a crew story that takes place in the 1930s at an American college. Having a number of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and LGBTQ team members in the boat and spectator crowds, as per the current trend, would feel as truthful as the recent inclusion of black hobbits in the Europe-set “Lord of the Rings” remake. In this case, that would be “rewriting history.” And who rewrites history? Communists, by and large, and so I’m happy to see George Clooney is not on the current Hollywood bandwagon, attempting to rewrite it.
The two flaws in “The Boys in the Boat” are that, firstly, it skimps on character development, and secondly, it vastly underplays realism regarding the bleakness of the Great Depression. It’s more reminiscent of 1990’s-era Robert Redford-directed movies such as “The Horse Whisperer,” and “A River Runs Through It.” It’s good-looking, nostalgic, and designed for family.
