'Boys in the Boat' review: George Clooney's true story gets stuck in the shallow end of the sports-movie pool
Steeped in old-fashioned virtues and a feel-good underdog story, “The Boys in the Boat” isn’t bad, but it doesn’t it ever navigate its way out of the shallow end of the sports-movie pool either. As it happens, Jesse Owens makes a cameo in this tale about the US Crew team from the University of Washington, a link to a better-known story from the 1936 Olympics that still eclipses this one.