{"id":740397,"date":"2026-07-03T06:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740397\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T06:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T06:52:10","slug":"young-washington-review-generic-biopic-gets-cut-down-by-its-own-credits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740397\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Young Washington\u2019 Review: Generic Biopic Gets Cut Down by Its Own Credits"},"content":{"rendered":"

No other major studio is as committed to catering to conservative Christian and American values as Angel Studios, and no other studio seems to have less faith that Americans share those values. While most producers and distributors of fine motion pictures are content to release their films and let audiences pay for their own admission, Angel Studios repeatedly concludes their more jingoistic<\/a> and religious<\/a> films with a last-minute panhandle over the closing credits, flimsily disguising their scheme \u2014 to get their fans to buy extra tickets, for theoretical audiences who may never actually use them \u2014 to inflate the box office and potentially make it look like their films are more popular than they are.<\/p>\n

This suggests they don\u2019t actually think conservative themes are popular, since otherwise they wouldn\u2019t need to game the system. If you truly believe in voting with your money, then films like \u201cYoung Washington\u201d \u2014 which conclude with an actor, in this case Kelsey Grammer, saying that giving Angel Studios extra cash is the same as \u201claunching a movement\u201d \u2014 can only be categorized as a form of voter fraud. On the 250th anniversary of this country, after watching a film about the heroism of George Washington, this attitude reads as un-American and undermines what was, until the credits, a somewhat effective biopic that almost satisfies.<\/p>\n

Directed, produced and co-written by Jon Erwin, \u201cYoung Washington\u201d stars William Franklyn-Miller as George Washington. He will eventually become the first President of the United States, but first he has to learn valuable lessons about leadership. Also, he has to kick French ass in slow-motion. The title evokes John Ford\u2019s 1939 biopic \u201cYoung Mr. Lincoln,\u201d another rah-rah attempt to deify an iconic American leader by telling a noteworthy anecdote about their life before the presidency. \u201cYoung Mr. Lincoln\u201d got away with it better than \u201cYoung Washington,\u201d but to be fair Jon Erwin is no John Ford, and William Franklyn-Miller is no Henry Fonda. Then again, who is?<\/p>\n

Setting all comparisons aside, Franklyn-Miller is perfectly acceptable as America\u2019s founding father. He\u2019s got a boyish, earnest, puppy dog expression in his early scenes that gradually erodes into a serious, well-earned glower. For a long time it appears that Washington can do no wrong. Erwin\u2019s film follows his early days as a member of the Virginia militia, talking his way into one opportunity that should have been above his station after another. But eventually he learns, after a series of ill-advised battles, that he\u2019s not yet qualified for the position, and has to accept and overcome his failings if he\u2019ll ever achieve anything great.<\/p>\n

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Erwin\u2019s direction is exceptionally competent, presenting the stories of Washington\u2019s young life with an uncomplicated, well-monied, 1980s tv movie sense of visual clarity. His depiction of Virginia and the Ohio Territories in the 1750s are vivid and varied, evoking a multitude of tones that sell the film\u2019s scenes of romance, valor and desperation. The costumes and sets are also convincing. \u201cYoung Washington\u201d is, undeniably, a decent-looking film.<\/p>\n

The cast isn\u2019t as reliable as Kristopher Kimlin\u2019s cinematography. Sir Ben Kingsley appears as the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and he\u2019s committed to his lines but spends so much of the movie behind a desk that you feel like applauding on the rare occasions he deigns to stand up. Kelsey Grammer is committed to pushing the plot forward, which he does, with some pep in his step. Andy Serkis understands that his character, Major-General Edward Braddock, exists in this film only to ignore Washington\u2019s advice and suffer for it, so he plays the man as a simplistic blowhard. Mia Rodgers always seems to be staring off into the distance, never fully present in her amorous scenes with Washington. Only Angus Castle-Doughty, as a sensible and snarky militiaman who\u2019s smarter than his so-called betters, seems eager to steal scenes \u2014 and he gets away with every heist.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung Washington\u201d is such a nuts and bolts biopic that it\u2019s hard not to focus on the little pieces. Especially since the themes don\u2019t quite tie it all together, undercut as they are by the film\u2019s disinterest in the uglier sides of history. George Washington is motivated, we learn, by the inequities of his birth. It\u2019s a cruel injustice that he isn\u2019t allowed to go to school or join the British military, just because he wasn\u2019t born with privilege. So he fights to right these wrongs, which would be inspiring were it not for the fact that, by the film\u2019s own admission, he owns ten slaves. And it sure is telling that not only are Washington\u2019s slaves never depicted on-screen, but when they are briefly acknowledged in dialogue \u2014 once \u2014 they\u2019re described as recipients of his family\u2019s charity.<\/p>\n

A simplistic portrayal of George Washington, or any of America\u2019s Founding Fathers, is hard to swallow in the 21st century. We finally rejected all the folksy tales about little boy George cutting down a cherry tree, and now \u201cYoung Washington\u201d shows him taking a few whacks at it anyway. By the time Washington is fighting the French in slow-mo gunfights, doing sick horseback stunts while sick with dysentery, any pretense that Jon Erwin\u2019s film should be taken seriously is out the window. And when George Washington is told, point blank, that the Indigenous Peoples of America think he was chosen by the gods to be their land\u2019s savior, you\u2019ll be forgiven for yelling curse words at the screen, or even for throwing up. (Well, I\u2019ll forgive you. The ushers at your local theater may feel differently.)<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung Washington\u201d is made with such corny insistence on Washington\u2019s and America\u2019s greatness that it could, by all rights, be a hit film on the nation\u2019s quarter-millennial birthday. I guess we\u2019ll never know, since, if it does make a lot of money,\u2028Angel Studios can\u2019t brag about it, because the number of tickets that get sold to actual, interested audience members could be a lot smaller than the number of tickets technically sold. The dishonesty of the moneymaking enterprise poisons what could have merely been another artificial biopic, designed only to make (some) Americans feel good about themselves before their annual fireworks show.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Scott\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No other major studio is as committed to catering to conservative Christian and American values as Angel Studios,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[152181,88,318055,206,318270,316542],"class_list":["post-740397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-angel-studios","tag-entertainment","tag-jon-erwin","tag-movies","tag-william-franklyn-miller","tag-young-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740397","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=740397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}