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The Boys in the Boat (2023)

Writer's picture: Kyle BainKyle Bain

Updated: Jan 20, 2024

In the 1930’s rowing Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) attempted to put together a team at the University of Washington that could not only compete with the great talent in the United States, but with the Germans in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. After intense tryouts, Al puts The Boys in the Boat, and they are off to the races. 


There are glaring technical issues within The Boys in the Boat, including the cinematography. What Director George Clooney finds himself doing is making the background too big for the subject of each frame, and with this characters like Al and Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) fall out of focus, and viewers struggle to hone in on them and appreciate their role at any given moment. The reality is that the sets that exist in The Boys in the Boat are, again, far too big, outshining the smaller subjects that exist throughout–and this makes it challenging for the film to truly thrive at any point. Rather, the film struggles to hone in on the most important things throughout a good portion of its run; and there were many times when I anticipated something in the background might be of importance, but time and time again I was wrong. 


Clooney and his team choose to, for whatever reason, aggressively transition from scene to scene throughout the course of The Boys in the Boat. Viewers often see the film quickly transition from dark to light or from near silence to almost deafening noise, and more often than not these things come without warning. I tried to figure out why Clooney chose to be so aggressive and abrupt in these instances, but I couldn’t put my finger on a legitimate reason. Again and again I found myself blinded and deafened by the things that occurred on screen, and not in a way that allowed me to connect with The Boys in the Boat, but rather one that forced me to look away, squint, or simply fall away from the film in another way. Like the other left-of-center technical choices made by Clooney, The Boys in the Boat struggles as a result of this one. 


With all of that said, however, The Boys in the Boat is quite an exciting film. To the average viewer it’s likely that this film thrives, and that every step of the way viewers are able to appreciate what they see on screen. The narrative is brilliant, based on the true story of the University of Washington rowing team from the 1930’s, and it will be easy for individuals to be reeled in and to fall in love with the story. 


Furthermore, what Clooney does so well in some of the more energetic moments of the film is allow emotion to rise to the surface. I’m not sure that we get the standard happiness and sadness that viewers might expect from the typical drama, but instead we get things like adrenaline and excitement, like we are in the boat with those titular boys. Throughout The Boys in the Boat viewers are able to experience things like this along with the characters, able to feel their emotions and the excitement that the boys might feel as they navigate their new journey. 


I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I hate when a secondary or tertiary love story weasels its way into a narrative and then dilutes a film as a whole. The Boys in the Boat does a brilliant job of keeping that love story between Joe and Joyce Simdars (Hadley Robinson) in the background, something to help propel the primary story rather than compete with it. 


The Boys in the Boat struggles technically with its sound, cinematography, and some other things, but on the surface, and for those viewers who are casual fans of cinema, it is incredibly appealing. The fact of the matter is that The Boys in the Boat isn’t perfect, and that I question many of the decisions made by Clooney and the pieces of his team that deal with those aforementioned technical aspects, but the narrative is incredible, the actors, starting with Edgerton and trickling all the way down to the bottom, are nearly perfect, and just about everything that the majority of moviegoers are looking for is spectacularly done. The Boys in the Boat is a fun movie that is sure to entertain if you don’t look too hard. 


Directed by George Clooney. 


Written by Daniel James Brown & Mark L. Smith. 


Starring Joel Edgerton, Callum Turner, Peter Guiness, Sam Strike, Thomas Elms, Jack Mulhern, Luke Slattery Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban, Tom Varey, Joel Phillimore, James Wolk, Hadley Robinson, Courtney Henggeler, Chris Diamantopoulos, Glenn Wrage, etc. 


⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10 = WORTH RENTING OR BUYING



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