George Clooney’s The Boys in the Boat, was long awaited by the rowing community. I joined Seattle Pacfic’s rowing team in 2021 and everyone and their mother asked if I had read The Boys in the Boat, a book about the men’s rowing team from the lowly University of Washington that took home gold in the 1936 Olympics despite the odds. The book, written by Daniel James Brown, specifically follows Joe Rantz, the 7 seat in the 1936 boat. Brown delves deep into Rantz’s background, detailing his difficult upbringing where he was abandoned by his father at 14 and became a rower at UW because the position came with a job and a bed. The book goes back and forth between Rantz’s UW life, his lonely and sad childhood, and other events in the world, namely Hitler’s rise to power in Europe.
When George Clooney announced his plan for a movie, I was excited and curious about how he would tackle condensing all of Brown’s details into a 2 hour film. After having seen it twice, I can confidently say I was disappointed in Clooney’s direction. It is a great risk to create a movie out of a book, and especially due to the niche-ness of rowing, Clooney took on a large task. Understandably, Clooney cut a lot of background about Rantz and honed in on the 9 men who went to the Olympics, including their coach. The film also opened immediately in 1936, not taking into account that the boys of ‘36 walked onto UW rowing in ‘34 and had two years of rowing under their belt before taking on the Olympics. This may seem like a minute detail, but by staging the whole movie in 1 year, it diminished the amount of work the actual men put in to make the Olympic team. The movie did not have a lot of dialogue, but a rather predictable script along with montage after montage of practices and races. Admittedly, the actors did commit well to the task of rowing, practicing for 6 weeks before-hand, and feeling real build-up to the final Olympic race, as the movie was filmed in order. To a rower’s eye, the 8 actors are often not in sync and could definitely use some form correction, but that’s just me being pretentious. The water scenes were still beautiful and fun to watch, and although most people seeing the movie already knew the outcome of UW taking home gold, Clooney did well building up suspense until the end.
After all this, my main qualm with this movie is in the character of Joyce Simdars, Joe Rantz’s girlfriend and later wife, played by Hadley Robinson. The book does detail Joe and Joyce’s relationship somewhat, but it is by no means a love-story. Joyce is a supporting character in Rantz’s life; she knows her worth, works hard to graduate college, and helps him repair his relationship with his father. The movie, however, characterized her as a ‘pick-me’ girl, constantly vying for Rantz’s attention, and never satisfied with his affection. Sports movies are not for everyone, so I understand Clooney’s want to capitalize more on the college sweethearts to gain a wider audience, which would have been fine had Joyce’s dialogue been less shallow and annoying. She boldly speaks to Rantz in the library first, and cringingly asks if he ever got over his crush on her from the fourth grade. This line was cheap, but she could have gotten away with it had her other lines been better. After Rantz makes the UW line-up he takes Joyce on a boat ride and the two share a cute date on the water, but then Joyce ruins it by saying that Rantz will get famous for rowing and forget all about her, as if he didn’t just leave his new teammates to take her out on the water late on a school night. Before Rantz goes to New York, she tells him to not flirt with any New York girls, as if he would be out partying while there on a rowing trip. Then, when Rantz is about to join his teammates on the train to New York for their Olympic qualifying race, the station crammed with people cheering on the UW men, she confesses her love for him and pouts when he doesn’t respond right away, as if there wasn’t something else possibly occupying his mind at the moment.
In New York, Rantz mentions his “girl Joyce” on the radio and the scene cuts to her shocked face, while listening in Seattle. This would have been a cute moment had she not suggested he say ‘hi’ to her if he got a chance on the radio before he left for New York.
Coach Ulbrickson’s wife is also given a fair amount of screen time, but she is characterized as an intelligent woman who gives vital encouragement to her husband, while Joyce remains the annoying girlfriend who hangs on Rantz’s arm. This disappointed me the most because in the year of Barbie, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé dominating the entertainment business, directors are still making choices to slight women in film. Clooney should have done better, and I’m not the only one complaining.