Movie Details
| Title: | The Boys in the Boat | |
| Director: | George Clooney | |
| Year: | 2023 | |
| Genre: | Sports | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 07.29.24 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (6)
- Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
- Good Night, and Good Luck
- The Ides of March
- Leatherheads
- The Midnight Sky
- The Monuments Men
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 07.29.24 | airplane | Airplane movie on the trip back. After Repo Man and North by Northwest I had a large selection of movies that I was mildly interested in, but some of them I didn't really want to watch on a plane. Plus depending on the film's aspect ratio they pan&scanned to fit their 1.85 screen so I started a couple movies then immediately bailed when I saw a message saying the film had been modified from its original. Side note: I give Delta points for offering these movies to begin with for everyone on the flight. I don't fly much anymore but the last times I've flown other domestic airlines (looking at you, United and American) you're on your own. But do you have to play an ad for Delta before the movie starts? I'm sitting in your airplane. You got me. You already have my money. You don't need to show me a commercial for the one product you absolutely know i've already chosen. You'll notice that I'm not complaining about the ad before the safety video where you say that Delta is the official airline sponsor of the Olympics. I understand that. I even kind of understand the bizarre and unsettling safety video where people are acting out the instructions in a pseudo resort facsimile of an aircraft where everyone has cold smiles and dead eyes. I'm not complaining about that either. But an ad before the movie, while it's better than ads during the movie, is worth a minor nitpick i think. Anyway, after trying several movies and bailing on them, I figured since I was just in Seattle and have taken an interest in rowing in the past couple years I should watch this movie. Once upon a time seeing "directed by George Clooney" piqued my interest. It's been a while since the days of Good Night and Good Luck but hey, worth a shot. Unfortunately, this is the worst version of this movie: completely mediocre. It does exactly what you think it's gonna do, goes where you think it's gonna go, and accomplishes nothing more than it has to. You've basically seen better versions of this movie if you've seen Seabiscuit or Cinderella Man or Miracle (and I never watched Miracle but I'm still confident that's better than this). Even if you know nothing of the true story that's depicted here, you can infer that they wouldn't make a movie about a losing Olympic team so you know they're gonna win. In lieu of any dramatic tension I was hoping for some beauty shots of rowing itself and some good meat about the sport and why it's so goddamn hard and why this team was as incredible as it way. I don't feel that I got any of that. I never understood that it was difficult to begin with, why the team didn't cohere at the start, what happened to make them cohere, and how much they excelled in order to win the matches they won. That's the real let down for me. According to the imdb trivia they trained the actors hard enough to get their stroke rate up to 46 strokes per minute (which is what the team did during their Olympics final). That's fast as shit. The only sense you get of that watching the movie is a few taps on the side of the boat and a callback to a song the team sang earlier. Milquetoast. |
