If nothing else, the new film about George Washington \u2014 released just in time for Donald Trumps\u2019 80th, I mean America\u2019s 250th, birthday \u2014 will give our overworked schoolteachers a break. It\u2019s all too easy to imagine them putting their feet up on their desks and taking a well-deserved nap while screening the film for their middle-school students. Depicting the military adventures of our first president when he was only in his early 20s during the French and Indian War, Young Washington provides an historical origin story that fits in well during our current superhero craze.<\/p>\n
After an early scene in which we see 12-year-old George (Will Joseph) left bereft by the death of his father and consoled by his strong-willed mother Mary (Mary-Louise Parker<\/a>) and half-brother Lawrence (John Foss), the rest of the story takes place in 1855. George (William Franklyn-Miller, Dongji Rescue<\/a>), now a strapping, model-handsome 22-year-old man, is desperately ambitious to rise above his modest station in life. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tYoung Washington\t\t<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n \tLike a Classics Illustrated comic book come to very stiff life.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tRelease date: Friday, July 3 After being rejected by the British army (oh, the irony!), he smartly insinuates himself with Lord Fairfax (Kelsey Grammer<\/a>, playing a sort of 18th-century version of Frasier), who becomes his mentor. George manages to get himself commissioned as a major in the Virginia militia, albeit without pay, by Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddle (Ben Kingsley, sporting a dodgy Scottish accent), primarily because of his knowledge of the surrounding area, which he\u2019s exhaustively surveyed and where the French have begun encroaching.<\/p>\n His military career initially doesn\u2019t go so well, including leading his men into a disastrous battle resulting in many casualties. But he soon learns his lessons and reveals his prowess, with his survival during the ensuing skirmishes ascribed to divine protection. One Indigenous leader, upon being introduced to Washington, solemnly intones, \u201cI will remember that name.\u201d And Dinwiddle, who formerly ridiculed Washington\u2019s impetuousness, becomes a convert, telling him, \u201cYou are the man of the hour.\u201d<\/p>\n As you can tell, the screenplay co-written by director Jon Erwin<\/a> (House of David, American Underdog), Tom Provost and Diederik Hoogstraten features the sort of declamatory dialogue that seems more suited to accompany graphic novel panels. We never get a true feeling of Washington\u2019s inner thoughts, which is less the fault of the actor playing him (although Franklyn-Miller\u2019s air of blankness doesn\u2019t help matters) than the cursory treatment that concentrates more on the numerous battle scenes. And while those sequences display an admirable historical accuracy in their depiction of the different fighting styles of the French and British forces of the period, they\u2019re marred by digital special effects that often prove unconvincing.<\/p>\n Feeling much longer than its two hours, Young Washington suffers from the stiff, stodgy quality of so many historical dramas, especially those concerning that particular period of history (The Howards of Virginia, Revolution, The Patriot, I rest my case). And while the film features several well-known actors, their performances are mostly distracting. Andy Serkis<\/a>, as an arrogant British general who fatally meets his comeuppance, is so over the top he makes his work as Gollum seem subtle.<\/p>\n Young Washington revels in its patriotism at every turn, but it was shot in Ireland, there apparently being nowhere in America that approximates the Virginia landscapes of the period. Even more egregiously, the film continues Angel\u2019s penchant for its \u201cPay It Forward\u201d marketing campaign, with the end credits featuring a special message from Kelsey Grammer extolling America\u2019s virtues and imploring audience members to buy tickets for others so that we can help make it \u201cAmerica\u2019s No. 1 Movie!\u201d To do anything less, we\u2019re given to believe, would be downright un-American.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If nothing else, the new film about George Washington \u2014 released just in time for Donald Trumps\u2019 80th,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[83364,88,318055,118784,14782],"class_list":["post-739837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-andy-serkis","tag-entertainment","tag-jon-erwin","tag-kelsey-grammer","tag-mary-louise-parker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Cast: William Franklyn-Miller, Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, Mary-Louise Parker, Kelsey Grammer, Joel Smallbone, John Foss, Mia Rodgers
Director: Jon Erwin
Screenwriters: Jon Erwin, Tom Provost, Diederik Hoogstraten
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRated PG-13,
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2 hour 5 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n