Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (June 25, 2024)
Already successful as an actor, George Clooney took on the director’s hat for 2002’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. With 2023’s The Boys in the Boat, we get Clooney’s ninth theatrical effort behind the camera.
Set in 1936, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) studies engineering at the University of Washington. He struggles with finances so he takes a slot on the school’s rowing team when he finds out it comes with a job attached.
Under Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), the squad prospers and qualifies for the Summer Olympics in Berlin. There they deal with the usual competitive factors as well as challenges connected to Hitler’s reign.
For the most part, stories about the 1936 Olympics focus on one subject: track and field star Jesse Owens. The tale of a Black athlete who beat the “superior” Germans in front of Hitler became – and remains – an irresistible saga.
Though Owens overshadows everything else from the 1936 games, clearly other worthwhile narratives exist. The question revolves around whether or not the Washington rowers offer one of those compelling tales.
Maybe? While completely professional and watchable, Clooney never finds a way to bring a film that does anything new or fresh.
Not that I’d call Boys chock full of clichés. Nonetheless, it does follow a fairly well-trodden path and it lacks choices that allow it to stand out from the pack.
Perhaps Clooney did so intentionally. Perhaps he went the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” path and figured that the standard “inspirational sports story” structure remained sturdy enough that he didn’t need to tamper with it.
I can’t really argue with that, but the problem with Boys stems from its inability to really rouse the audience. Everything feels so perfunctory that it becomes difficult to muster much emotion.
This means fairly flat characters who go through the usual motions in terms of stories about athletic underdogs. Boys doesn’t feel predictable because we know the history – it comes across that way because we know the genre.
Again, Clooney stages all of this in a professional manner and he hits the usual beats. To some degree, I appreciate that he doesn’t work overtime to pull emotional heartstrings.
Though I admit I kind of wished he did so at times. While not devoid of spirit, Boys can feel too subdued and without the rousing impact we expect from this kind of tale.
In the end, I can’t find anything truly wrong with Boys, but I also can’t locate anything about it that makes it especially involving or memorable. It delivers a competent underdog story that just never connects in any real way.