This was a late stage potential Oscar spoiler. Amazon posting a George Clooney directed film over the Christmas frame felt so much like what they tried to do with The Tender bar. While Ben Affleck did get a little traction for his supporting turn in that film, these Boys rowed on a path to nowhere. perhaps, because, we’ve seen an inspirational sports drama about almost everything already. So, a film about the underdogs at the historic Berlin Olympics who got there by rowing crew, perhaps wasn’t the Oscar bait we thought it might be.
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, George Clooney’s The Boys In The Boat focuses on a team from the university Of Washington that is selected to represent America at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. And yes, there’s a Jesse Owens cameo. Clooney uses the setting of the resilience and determination of these athletes against not just the backdrop of Nazi Germany, but a depression era, where these boys are acutely aware of where they might be if they were to not make the cut, or to get cut from the team.
The strength of the film lies in Clooney’s ability to capture this experience, of working against the hardships of the depression and the weight that puts on a team that devotes so much time to their sport, and is so reliant on each other to succeed. Callus Turner brings out the most of any of the Boys, as his story is focused on more than the others, and he navigates the material well. Joel Edgerton is mostly wasted in a generic coach role, but he does show up. This is just one of those rare times where the coach role feels second to that of the athletes. So many other sports dramas have been about the coach, but that dynamic isn’t here. Edgerton supports his team, not overshadows them like Kurt Russell in Miracle, Josh Lucas in Glory Road, or Samuel L JAckson in Coach Carter.
The Boys In The Boat does suffer from feeling generic and derivative. It feels like every sports movie you’ve seen before, beat for beat, and there isn’t something here that takes it up above the rest. For all the skill Clooney could have brought to the story, he just competently told it instead of finding a new way to capture this moment. by the time we get to the Olympics, it almost feels like he’s contractually obligated to have this team run into Hesse Owens. The film is inspiring, but this genre is built to be inspiring. It’s sentimental, but films of this ilk just are. And while we spend a lot of time exploring the themes of the depression, we do kinda move through Nazi germany pretty quickly, where we could have maybe focused a bit more on why the 1936 Olympics were such a big deal. Simply including Jesse Owens isn’t enough.
but through it all, we had terrific audio description produced by Deluxe, and narrated by Laura Post. I feel like when I put those names together, there just isn’t a question of quality. I’m not saying either is my personal favorite, but the consistency, and the dominance they have in the field, if they one day made an inspirational movie about creating audio description, Post would probably have that final boss cameo like how Jesse Owens pops up here.
If you haven’t seen this, i don’t think you missed anything. If you like sports movies and just need to see all of them, this one isn’t bad, it just feels like all of the ones you’ve seen. If you don’t like sports, Clooney didn’t do anything shocking to change your mind. but at least the audio description is solid.
Final Grade: C+
