George Clooney follows up The Tender Bar (2021) with another unabashed heartwarmer, a solid but fairly predictable old-school sports biopic celebrating the scrappy University of Washington men’s rowing eight, which powered to the 1936 Olympics against all the odds.
Adapted from Daniel James Brown’s bestseller, The Boys in the Boat is a real-life underdog story, one that zeroes in on Callum Turner’s proud but penniless Depression-era student Joe Ranz, who desperately battles for a crew place just for the free board and lodging.
Director Clooney’s sweaty close-ups of the crew’s back-breaking training adroitly emphasise the teamwork that gruff coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) instils into his team of argumentative, mostly working-class recruits, who combat their hard times with inspiringly hard work.
Too bad then, that Mark L. Smith’s (The Revenant, Clooney’s The Midnight Sky) taciturn script (it’s a manly movie, set in a stiff-upper-lip era) is too understated to get you really rooting, Seabiscuit-style, for the raw but exceptional crew when they try and trounce their rich-boy rivals at California and Yale regattas.
Still, rowing races are notoriously hard to infuse with tension on film (see 1996 megaflop True Blue, or 2021 melodrama Heart of Champions); by moving snappily between handsome drone shots, screaming crowds and bug-eyed, tendon-straining rowers, Clooney successfully manages to generate some water-whipping excitement.
Any attempt at Chariots of Fire-style emotional intensity is tanked, however, by Callum Turner’s unhelpfully laconic, low-key performance. He’s effortlessly overshadowed by a brooding turn from Jack Mulhern (Mare of Easttown) as the boat’s enigmatic lead oarsman.
The Boys in the Boat is out now in US cinemas and in UK cinemas on January 12. For more upcoming movies, here's our guide to 2024 movie release dates.
