A small cherry tree that should have grown a little taller.
“Young Washington” tells the story of George Washington in his youth before his part in the American Revolution and before he became the first President of the United States. As the latest Angel Studios entry, I’m not really convinced it has the kind of faith to help tell his story. It just mixes a lot of elements here to qualify itself as a story.
There are signs of entertainment that “Young Washington” would like to engage us in, and they do work periodically. But I guess there is such thing as too much of a good thing.
In his childhood, we see him throwing a tantrum for being rejected from school and being scolded by his religious widowed mother (Mary Louise Parker) for handling his drama. And he ends up being homeschooled by his older half-brother Lawrence (John Foss).
In his early adulthood, we also see him (William Franklyn-Miller) and the French speaking interpreter Christopher Gist (Leo Hanna) nearly freezing to death during the Allegheny Expedition, when their small wooden raft faces a strong current and they’re forced to spend the night on a small island. They manage to get off the next morning when the river freezes.
There’s also a small romance between George and Lawrence’s spouse Sally Fairfax (Mia Rodgers) way before he married Martha. He has to sneak his way into a party that his half-brother was invited to, and that’s when he takes fancy to her,
And we see him as a Major under the leadership of Robert Dinwiddle (Ben Kinglsey) during the French and Indian War. He must prove to himself that he is capable of being worthy on the battlefield, despite all the conflicts between the American and English.
The cast also includes Kelsey Grammar as the planter and peer Thomas Fairfax and Andy Serkis (whose last Angel Studios entry was his awful version of “Animal Farm”) as the British Army officer Edward Braddock. Grammer’s performance isn’t convincing when he can’t seem to decide if he’s British or American with the accent. But at least, Serkis has the voice and age to be Braddock.
“Young Washington” is the first movie Jon Erwin has directed since “Jesus Revolution,” and while he has some good actors to work with like Franklyn-Miller, Foss, and Hanna (none of which I’ve heard of, but still see some likability in them), and some nice representations of Washington’s adventures, he doesn’t have the kind of pacing to keep things balanced. In fact, it ends up having wooden teeth in his narrative. A story about the first POTUS before he even became President should be as exhilarating and wise as he was. And it should be as entertaining as it suggests itself with him on the battlefield. But it never stands on his own as a biopic.
Speaking of which, at the very least, in the war genre, it does keep us watching a lot more than the bland WWII drama “Lucky Strike” did. Sometimes, it plays like an action movie with some of the dialogue, and other times, it wants to feel like a historical war movie with how the Founding Father came through. It wants to be an entertainment for history buffs, I’m not seeing much of a history lesson here.
“Young Washington” has its heart in the right place, and it refuses to tell a lie, but this cherry tree needs to keep growing. Honesty is better than exploitation any day of the week.
