The Boys in the Boat is based on a true story about a college rowing team from the University of Washington. The movie takes place during the Great Depression in the 1930s and follows Joe Rantz (Callum Turner), a poor college student who joins the rowing team to help pay for school.
The story starts with an old Joe looking back on his life, then jumps to 1936 when he was young. Joe and his teammates work incredibly hard under their tough coach Al Ulbrickson (Joel Edgerton) and learn from an old boat builder named George Pocock (Peter Guinness). The team has to beat other schools and deal with personal problems to make it to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany.
Along the way, Joe tries to win over his girlfriend Joyce (Hadley Robinson) and deal with family issues. The big finish shows the team facing money problems, sickness, and bad luck at the Olympics, but they still manage to beat Germany's team right in front of Adolf Hitler.
The movie looks great and the rowing scenes are filmed really well - you can feel how hard and precise the sport is. The music adds emotion to the right moments, even though it's pretty predictable. Joel Edgerton does a nice job as the serious, focused coach, bringing strength to the role even when the script doesn't give him much to work with. It's also hard not to root for a bunch of working-class guys trying to beat the rich kids, and the final race is exciting.
But the movie has some big problems. The biggest issue is that except for Joe and the coach, you barely get to know anyone else on the team. The book tells you about each guy's background, but the movie treats them like extras. You can't even remember most of their names. The movie also brings up serious issues like Joe's family abandoning him, money troubles, and one guy getting really sick, but then fixes everything magically in a few minutes. There's no real tension because you know it'll all work out quickly.
The love story between Joe and Joyce is boring and feels forced. They have zero chemistry and she's just there to smile and cheer him on. In the book, she's actually important to his life, but here she's just window dressing. The dialogue is full of clichés like "It's not about the eight, it's about the one" and "We weren't eight, we were one,". The whole movie follows the exact same pattern as every other underdog sports movie.
The movie also wastes its historical setting. The 1936 Olympics happened in Nazi Germany, which should have made things more interesting, but the movie barely mentions this. A better movie would have done more with the idea of working class Americans winning while Hitler watched.
If you read Daniel James Brown's book, you'll be let down. The book is full of details about Joe's tough childhood, how hard the team trained, and what life was like during the Depression. This movie throws all that away and turns a rich true story into just another sports movie.
The Boys in the Boat looks good and has a few exciting moments, but it's pretty shallow. It doesn't have the depth or emotional punch it needed to be really good. If you like underdog sports movies, you might enjoy it on a lazy afternoon. But if you want something that'll really grab you, read the book or watch the PBS documentary instead.
Watch on Apple TV