Look if you've seen the trailer for The Boys In The Boat you know exactly what you're going to get for better and for worse. There isn't a whole lot of originality in this movie, though to be fair you could also argue the real life story is one we've heard before as well. But it does a fairly solid job at presenting this premise we've seen before in an energetic way that I was more invested in than I expected to be.
Rowing probably isn't the most cinematic sport in the world but I think Clooney does a really good job at making it visually interesting and showing the physical toll it takes on these athletes. Even if the story itself is riddled with cliches it still worked more often than it didn't. It's fitted with a hardened coach, training montages and an extremely cheesy romance to cap it all off. I couldn't help but roll my eyes occasionally at all the familiarities but ultimately it helped to build up these characters and added real, tangible stakes to the final race that I did find quite gripping.
The familiar tropes aside, my biggest issues with this movie lies in some of the pacing and choices made by the editor. The first half in particular really lacks a lot of momentum which led to my attention wandering a lot because it felt like the film was hitting the expected beats rather than building to something meaningful. As much as I thought the climactic race itself was well done the build up to it did leave something to be desired. The film sort of feels like it has 2 climaxes when 2 separate curveballs are thrown at these characters in the 3rd act and sort of made me feel like the film was overstaying it's welcome by the time it ended. I also think the editing during some of the racing scenes could've been stronger. These boats all look very similar and I very often had a hard time distinguishing them on screen and I think cleaner editing would've helped with that.
The Boys In The Boat may not have had a lot of surprises but it's all about execution. It's a solid version of a story we've seen done before but these tropes are tried and tested for a reason. It takes a reasonably un-cinematic subject matter and translates it to the screen pretty successfully. It's definitely not the best of it's type but I was invested and I enjoyed my time with it and I can't ask for much more than that.
Rowing probably isn't the most cinematic sport in the world but I think Clooney does a really good job at making it visually interesting and showing the physical toll it takes on these athletes. Even if the story itself is riddled with cliches it still worked more often than it didn't. It's fitted with a hardened coach, training montages and an extremely cheesy romance to cap it all off. I couldn't help but roll my eyes occasionally at all the familiarities but ultimately it helped to build up these characters and added real, tangible stakes to the final race that I did find quite gripping.
The familiar tropes aside, my biggest issues with this movie lies in some of the pacing and choices made by the editor. The first half in particular really lacks a lot of momentum which led to my attention wandering a lot because it felt like the film was hitting the expected beats rather than building to something meaningful. As much as I thought the climactic race itself was well done the build up to it did leave something to be desired. The film sort of feels like it has 2 climaxes when 2 separate curveballs are thrown at these characters in the 3rd act and sort of made me feel like the film was overstaying it's welcome by the time it ended. I also think the editing during some of the racing scenes could've been stronger. These boats all look very similar and I very often had a hard time distinguishing them on screen and I think cleaner editing would've helped with that.
The Boys In The Boat may not have had a lot of surprises but it's all about execution. It's a solid version of a story we've seen done before but these tropes are tried and tested for a reason. It takes a reasonably un-cinematic subject matter and translates it to the screen pretty successfully. It's definitely not the best of it's type but I was invested and I enjoyed my time with it and I can't ask for much more than that.