FILM

A syrup-sweet throwback

Words: Tom Ransley

PHOTOGRAPHY LAURIE SPARHAM

Great cinema creates a timeless bubble in which to float away and lose yourself for an hour or two. To inhabit this make-believe world, movie-magic must fashion a hook on which to catch and pull you through the film. Think, plot; visuals; sumptuous characters or a stellar score.

If a film levels up on all four, even better.

For me, The Boys in the Boat just misses the mark. The plot is decent but familiar, the visuals are strong as are the characters, but nothing grabbed me. I never felt a true sense of peril or excitement. Pappy in places, the whole thing ticked along like an above-average row: good but not good enough. And Coach, do we really need another film aggrandising silent, moody, males who don’t like to smile and struggle to express their emotions? (Also, with only two significant female characters it almost certainly fails the Bechdel test. But, perhaps, that’s too much to ask of a rowing film set in 1930s America.)

Let’s start at the start. The film opens with an older gent, peeling an apple at the riverside looking out at modern-day rowers paddling upstream, some boys in an eight and a youngster in a single. The apparent, impending jeopardy comes from the wash created by a raucous groupcruising in a speedboat. It all feels painfully innocent: a throwback, vanilla-vibe from yester-year, ‘straight to DVD’ old-fashioned family hits from the ‘90s, ready to rent at Blockbuster. The older gent is Joe Rantz, and the film returns to this scene after telling the story of Rantz’s 1936 USA Olympic crew.