Vague Visages’ The Boys in the Boat review contains minor spoilers. George Clooney’s 2023 movie features Joel Edgerton, Callum Turner and Peter Guinness. Check out the VV home page for more film reviews, along with cast/character summaries, streaming guides and complete soundtrack song listings.

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The underdog sports biopic is one of the most resilient narratives in Hollywood cinema, polished off countless times every year as complex rags-to-riches journeys are simplified into a neat three-act structure. But in recent years, it seems like audiences have become as tired as critics, with this formula — from high profile boxing dramas (Big George Foreman) to quirkier tales of teams overcoming all the odds to success (Next Goal Wins) — being met with indifference. One could attribute this to post-COVID viewing habits, as audiences are likelier than ever to be more selective with their choices, opting to wait for streaming options to catch up with more formulaic fare. However, this feels more like an existential crisis for the genre. Forget superhero movies — even the most cursory glance at critic reviews and box office results reveals that the sports biopic is facing an even bigger, more unprecedented shunning.

What this context means is that the underdog sports movie is now an underdog itself, but I highly doubt George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, The Boys in the Boat, will be the film to defy all odds and remind audiences of the power of this tried-and-tested storytelling formula (The Iron Claw, also arriving in theaters at Christmas, is the genre’s best placed hope). Overly reliant on cliches and barely diving into what makes this story unique beyond some surface level lip service, The Boys in the Boat is the expected result from a journeyman filmmaker half-heartedly ticking another genre off his bucket list. If you’ve seen any of Clooney’s previous films as director, you’ll know that another mission completed is far from a mission accomplished.

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Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) is a working class student struggling to stay afloat at the University of Washington. The athlete is days away from throwing in the towel for higher education altogether, until he’s persuaded to try out for the university’s rowing team. And not only does Joe defy the odds and get in, but he proves crucial in helping the men’s team win several tournaments, eventually beating more prestigious squads to get their shot at representing the USA in the 1936 Olympics.

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With rowing now viewed as a pursuit strictly for Ivy League college elites, The Boys in the Boat’s hook is the exploration of this world when it was America’s most-viewed spectator sport. However, rowing was still perceived as being closed off to those lower down the economic food chain. Clooney’s film acknowledges this, but The Boys in the Boat never becomes a full-throated attempt at smashing the class ceiling like so many other underdog tales in this genre. Instead, the protagonists’ hardships are depicted in the briefest of moments, like visiting a soup kitchen, or contemplating quitting college over an inability to pay for tuition. As a filmmaker, it’s clear that Clooney’s love for the sports biopic is earnest, which is why it’s frustrating that he depicts every last narrative cliché apart from the one that’ll make it easier to invest in this story. By only fleetingly bringing attention to the economic hardships at play, The Boys in the Boat frustratingly remains a niche proposition, of fascination only to fans of the film’s focal sport. There is, of course, a romantic subplot as another means of investing in the movie’s human core, but that never feels anything other than perfunctory.

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Admittedly, this is an issue Clooney seems to be aware of, and he makes several attempts to create nail-biting action out of The Boys in the Boat’s racing sequences. It takes a while before this begins to connect, as every race seems to take place on the same anonymous body of water, stretching out indefinitely, with very little visual flare to make any location onscreen feel particularly distinct. I likely won’t be the only one who initially compares itharshly to The Social Network’s (2010) Henley Royal Regatta sequence, which in less than a minute succeeds in creating tense, kinetic action out of a moment centered around secondary characters. However, as the first major race approaches the finish line in The Boys in the Boat, Clooney’s staging begins to develop a pulse, albeit not with any unique techniques; however, extreme close-ups and quick zoom-ins feel like an oasis in the desert compared to the relatively passionless craftsmanship elsewhere.

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Each act of The Boys in the Boat culminates with a crucial race, with the finale being the focal team representing the USA at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, right under the nose of Adolf Hitler. It’s a curious end to an aspiring aspirational tale, largely because it’s at this moment that the team’s story emerges as one of the least interesting things happening in the frame — something underlined by their chance meeting with Jesse Owens (Jyuddah Jaymes), in an awkwardly written exchange about racism. As the protagonists prepare to face off against the Nazi regime — an event that is being watched by the Fuhrer himself — one can feel Clooney awkwardly, belatedly realizing that the victory of a white, gentile team is hardly enough to bring the architect of a genocide against Jews and people of color down to size. 

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If triumph arrives with a thud in The Boys in the Boat, unlike the protagonists’ earlier races against wealthy US colleges, they’re not defying the odds during the Olympics. The focal athletes beat Germany, yes, but this team’s victory feels fairly unimportant when placed within the wider context, and even more so following a scene featuring Owens, whose groundbreaking wins did indeed famously anger Hitler. The Fuhrer storms off like a child when his team loses, but that’s the full extent of his negative portrayal — an oddly apathetic view of the infamous German dictator, assuming the audience already know that he is the ultimate evil. But The Boys in the Boat isn’t a WWII story, and — especially in the current moment — Clooney’s movie feels vital to remind audiences that Hitler’s villainy didn’t begin when he invaded Poland.

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If you haven’t seen a movie about rowing before, then you presumably have seen every narrative beat of The Boys in the Boat done better in countless other sports dramas. Despite having a charismatic screen presence, Clooney seems unable to direct a movie that translates his persona behind the camera.

Alistair Ryder (@YesitsAlistair) has been writing about film and TV for nearly five years at Film Inquiry, Gay Essential and The Digital Fix. He’s also a member of GALECA (the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association), and once interviewed Woody Harrelson, which he will probably tell you about extensively, whether you want to hear about it or not.

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