Opening theatrically on Christmas Day, The Boys in the Boat is both incredibly square and eminently welcome, especially considering George Clooney’s last three whiffs as a director (the disjointed Suburbicon, disappointing The Midnight Sky and disheartening The Tender Bar). Although still notching well below Clooney’s directorial high point of Good Night, and Good Luck, Boat is easily his best such effort since The Monuments Men — coincidentally tapping a similarly tried-and-true vein of historical drama.
Much like Miracle before it, Boat chronicles the journey of young, scrappy American underdogs in Olympic competition. Here, it’s the junior varsity crew team from the University of Washington, which rowed its way to unanticipated results during the 1936 Summer Olympics in the heart of Nazi Germany. (Jesse Owens turns up briefly, and Boat even drags out you-know-who for the big finish as the Americans give the Fuhrer and a bellowing German crowd what for.)
Told as flashback, Boat predominantly focuses on crew member Joe Rantz (Callum Turner). Left behind by a father for whom a second marriage and younger children took precedence, Joe lives off canned goods in a Seattle shantytown as a young man and finds his already meager day-laborer opportunities dwindling. Late on payments for his engineering education at the university, Joe is about to be bounced from the rolls. When he learns about tryouts for the JV crew team — where a spot includes pay and shelter — Joe gives it a shot, makes the squad and struggles to validate his own self-worth even as the team collectively prospers.
Perhaps some industrious documentarian will create a companion piece concerning how such college-athlete compensation was once commonplace before, until recently, being put on mothballs. Boat generally emphasizes an even more sun-dappled simplicity than Seabiscuit, stoking feel-good vibes as a salve for the palpable stings of life in the Great Depression (the end of which was then several years away). Joe obviously needs the money, but it’s just connections that he craves — a romance with fellow student Joyce Simdars (Hadley Robinson), the tough-love motivation from Coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton), the inspiration of the wise, aging boatbuilder George Pocock (Peter Guinness) and, of course, the camaraderie with crew mates.
If all eight men can achieve harmony of movement and purpose, Pocock says, rowing can transform into more poetry than sport. So goes the pursuit of this squad, which first surprises its varsity counterparts, then its manor-born Ivy League collegiate rivals across the country and, later, the world itself.
Besides Rantz, there are only two teammates of narrative note in Boat. Don Hume (Jack Mulhern) is a meek and silent type who can still turn up a party by sitting at the piano, and his pace proves pivotal for the crew — particularly as he rallies past illness in Berlin. Even better is Luke Slattery as Bobby Moch, the crew’s coxswain who dictates strategy from the front of the boat and gives the crew rein to run or a tight tether. Sometimes Moch aligns with Ulbrickson’s demands. More often than not, he bucks them. The coxswain position combines shot-calling and shit-talking, and Slattery infuses Moch with a proper amount of abrasive energy — casting outstanding death glares across the water at his counterparts for other crews. (Character actors Chris Diamantopoulos and James Wolk also respectively shine as Royal Brougham, a sports journalist following the Huskies, and Tom Bolles, Ulbrickson’s assistant coach who stands by his boss’s unorthodox decisions.)
These performances keep Boat afloat amid a script from Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) that treats every incident like an emotional emergency in which to break all glass and pull every lever. (Moments involving Joe’s absentee father are especially corny.) Boat also seems to be missing key scenes, namely Joe’s reconciliation with the team after briefly leaving and clarification on how, exactly, Hume summons the strength to sit up in Berlin let alone row like a madman. Amid a holiday crush of superheroes, chocolatiers and musicals, Boat aims to drop anchor as a consensus choice for families. Audiences, and Clooney, could certainly do worse.