Fittingly, tragically, hilariously … this film really missed the boat. Depression-era historical re-creation The Boys in the Boat belongs not only to a different age of history, it also belongs in a different age of film … one in which we all understood Nazis were the bad guys, one in which the height of tragedy was a white orphan living out of a car, and -most importantly- an age in which Americans could imagine over 100,000 people gathering around a radio to hear the play-by-play of a boat race.
Seriously, imagine that. Can you? We currently live in a world in which you could have money riding on the outcome and still find this boring. Now remember you’re not even watching it; you’re hearing a guy on the radio say, “with 500 meters to go, Princeton leads by half a boat-length. They’re stroking furiously.” If that does it for you (and if you can manage not to giggle when you hear about furious stroking), I’m pretty sure you’re overdue for a colonoscopy.
Now, let’s add to that an all-white cast for obvious reason and a hero playing a college underclassman at the age of 33.
To be fair, Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) has a girlfriend played by Hadley Robinson, who is 29. Oh, I see, this is “old school,” is it? You know what? That phrase finally makes sense.
The year is 1935 and Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) needs a win. In the days before the nation cared about college football, did we care about college crew? The film kinda implies we did. Thousands upon thousands of people coming out for a dual meet … of crew. The boats go down a river in a straight line, then one is declared the winner. Geez, and I thought soccer was boring. Anyhoo, it had been a while since Coach Al had a boat declared a winner, so he poured a lot of effort into ignoring the boat that would give him the most notoriety of his entire career.
You see, most crew teams field two boats, a senior squad and a junior squad. The senior squad is the one that really counts; the JV squad is an afterthought and gets treated as such up until the moment it starts beating the senior squad head-to-head (which happens very infrequently outside the movies). Crew is a team sport, eight persons all performing in unison for a communal desired outcome, so naturally this film only cares about one (1) student. Joe lives in a junkyard and hangs with the bindle crowd. His mother dead, his father abandoned Joe when the lad was 14, and -currently- the college student can’t afford tuition at the University of Washington. Huh. How much was state college tuition in 1935? Enough to be prohibitive, apparently. Unable to find work, Joe tries out for crew, which promises its members a paying job – well, there’s another thing I have to research, huh? The university crew members are automatically given paying jobs? How does that work? When did the NCAA step in to create rules on how you treated student athletes, money-wise?
Joe, of course, makes the squad in between being hit on by the most aggressive co-ed of the 1930s. Perhaps Joyce (Robinson) being 29 she didn’t feel she could be timid. The rest is history, of course. Joe and seven others who apparently share the same DNA proved better at moving backwards in 
unison than other sets of young white men. In between boat races, Joe and Joyce spend stolen minutes discussing heart medication and platinum hair dye. (Actually, that’s just a guess; the film added romance as an afterthought in case some females happened to show up in the theater.)
100,000 people show up to watch a dual boat race. Are you sure about this? I mean, I know there was no Nintendo in 1936, but, seriously, we as a people must have had something better to do, no?
The whole premise of The Boys in the Boat is wrong. Team crew is about eight guys acting as one, but all we care about in the film is one (1) guy. That doesn’t make sense. This is an otherwise nice story, with what I’m sure were true-to-life recreations. I’m sure that the real Joe Rantz had plenty of hurdles to jump over and I’m sure the University of Washington is at a disadvantage, money-wise, versus the Ivy League. But, how shall I put this … ? Come on, man. White people with boating backgrounds aren’t exactly an oppressed class. It is extremely hard to get behind The Boys in the Boat as a “big picture” film. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, George Clooney and a Christmas release date suggest big picture. I’m not going to be overly critical on that score; George has no say as to when the film gets released. But the film isn’t important and might just be off-putting for people not inured to see the magic of crew, and even some of us who do.
If you can get excited about a boat race, this is the film you waited for. Truly, deeply, simply, I profess that The Boys in the Boat isn’t a bad film; it just belongs to a different era. This one has better priorities … and black people.
There once was a white guy named Rantz
Whose education could not advance
So he took up some oaring
Which seems rather boring
Yet it granted his fate one big chance
Rated PG-13, 123 Minutes
Director: George Clooney
Writer: Daniel James Brown, Mark L. Smith
Genre: Wet Bad News Bears
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: How old are you? How white are you?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The college hero is 33 and you have to ask
