23 January 2024
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch critiques the critics.
Depending on where you live, the long-awaited movie, The Boys in the Boat, has now been on general release for at least a week. HTBS’s Peter Mallory got to see the film before its general US release on Christmas Day and posted his review on 21 December. Damning with faint praise, he began, The Hollywood version only highlights how magnificent the book version is. However, Peter concluded: For years, rowers have fervently prayed that Hollywood wouldn’t screw up this most sublime of stories. Thank heavens, they didn’t.
Unsurprisingly for anyone who has ever seen a film of a book, the movie misses out large chunks of Daniel James Brown’s work and also compresses real timelines. In a piece I did on the location shooting at Henley in May 2023 I wrote:
Will the film be any good? Famously, you should never judge a book by its movie, but equally, books are not shooting scripts. Asking if Clooney’s Boys will be as good as Brown’s Boys is not asking if the former will be a slavish copy of the latter.
Peter Mallory echoed this in his review: (Any) deviations from history to fit a 400-page book into a two-hour movie seem as justified as they are inevitable.
The only way the film could more closely reflect the book would be if it was a twelve-part Netflix type series. Thus, the movie starts with Joe Rantz’s arrival at college, BITB only shows his childhood in brief flashbacks. Also, the Boys’ journey from beginners to Olympians was compressed into one year, 1936, not three. Would some sort of montage of training and racing between 1934 and 1936 really have improved the story – even for HTBS Types? I think not.
Many critics have complained that, however well or badly they consider that it was done, The Boys in the Boat is a standard “underdogs win through” sports movie. As I have previously pointed out:
The amazing thing about the 1936 University of Washington Huskies and the story of their performance in Berlin is that, if it were not true, it would be dismissed as a ridiculous collection of film cliches which would insult all but the most undemanding viewer…
The BITB list of true cliches includes:
An unlikely collection of underdogs is thrown together at random – but turn out to “have something.”
There is a young coach, an old master and a former colleague turned rival.
There is a contest for selection for The Big Race where social superiors are unexpectedly beaten.
The Big Race is organised by Bad People with Another Agenda.
In The Final, the Star Player is ill, the organisers cheat, the heroes start badly but win in the last few seconds.
The respected film review site, Rotten Tomatoes, records a split between the verdict of 146 critics (who give an average score of 57%) and an audience average score of 97% (this based on over 2,500 ratings).
Rotten Tomatoes summarises the critic’s view as: The Boys in the Boat tells its inspirational true story with heart and solid craftsmanship, but director George Clooney’s stolidly traditional approach prevents it from leaving much of an impact.
However, the audience’s more positive reaction is precised as: The Boys in the Boat might be slow in spots, but the end result is still an inspiring feel-good film that the whole family can enjoy.
Allowing for a little more passion appropriate for a rower and historian who has followed this project from its early days and who applauds the strenuous attempts that the filmmakers made to get the rowing right, I mostly go along with Joey Magidson’s review on awardsradar.com:
George Clooney directs a script by Mark L. Smith, both of whom are playing this as classically as possible. Alexandre Desplat’s score and Martin Ruhe’s cinematography contribute to this as well. The Boys in the Boat is meant to be a throwback, which everyone sets out to achieve with solid success. If there’s a flaw, it’s that there’s not a lot of passion here. Clooney feels more like a gun for hire than an inspired filmmaker. The movie comes alive when it’s on the water… Otherwise, it’s the type of film you just know that you’ve seen before.
The Boys in the Boat is, ultimately, just an old-fashioned and stately affair from George Clooney. He’s following the beats of the inspirational true-life sports story in a satisfying yet unspectacular manner, resulting in a film that’s easy to admire, but hard to be passionate about. I liked it, much like I do usually with Clooney’s efforts behind the camera, but the movie fades from memory pretty fast. Make of that what you will.
Whatever criticisms can be made of The Boys in the Boat, I have no doubt that it will be HTBS Types’ favourite rowing film for a long time to come. We should all throw cox/director George Clooney into the water in celebration.
Hear The Boat Sing 
I compared this to Seabiscuit, another lovely depression-era film, so I don’t agree with the “no time” argument. Although Seabiscuit also took liberties with the book, they fit a great deal of backstory into the span of a single movie. Inventing shmaltzy romances of walk-on characters from the book (Joyce Rantz and Hazel Ulbrickson) felt disingenuous and stole valuable time from the real elephant in the room – George Pocock – a character who would have lit up the screen but who was essentially absent.
One thing that put this movie above Seabiscuit were the action sequences, which were marvelous….as opposed to watching Tobey Maguire bob a fake horse head around the racetrack. Kudos to the director, the crew and the actors for that. Good job!
PS I agree it is a wonderful way to bring people into our sport.