Swimming With Men (2019) - Movie Review

Growing up is difficult. Growing old, even more so. The mindset that aging can put people in can make for great works of cinema, but unfortunately, this film isn’t one of them. Based on the 2010 documentary Men Who Swim (making this the third film I’ve covered this year that’s based on a pre-existing piece of cinema, after Fighting With My Family and Hotel Mumbai), this film has its material cut out for it with a story about a group of older men who form a synchronised swimming team and compete on the international level in Milan. However, both as a dramatisation of actual events and as a piece of drama on its own, this fails to do much more than swim in circles.

Right from the start, the narrative is soaked in existential ennui and fear of getting older, something that the cast are more than equipped to work with. Rob Brydon in the lead is kept in an emotionally heavy holding pattern for the majority of the film, which would be fine given the performance if it weren’t for how plain his arc turns out. Hell, pretty much all of the specifics (when the film even deigns to hand them over) are plain, resulting in what should be some dramatic reveals in the latter half going off like a damp squib. Why is it that every time a character is introduced in a film as the one who never talks, their contribution to the finale ends up being exactly the same every single time? I know that the in-universe rules for the team are that private lives should stay private, but on the big screen, some reason to actually care about what’s going on would help.

Then again, that would mean something actually happens, and for the majority of the running time, not much does. I’d make a joke about how difficult it is to make synchronised swimming into something exciting and engaging, except the finale where we see the team’s routine in full is easily the most engaging part of the entire film. And then it devolves into this really strange bit of public performance that has something to do with Brydon’s politician wife but… yeah, it doesn’t stick. Most of the film just involves the main group bantering with each other, and considering it reaches the level of ‘this guy is an accountant, does that mean he’s autistic?’, it’s not exactly banter worth watching a whole film for.

Films like these where very little ends up happening are an absolute bitch to write about, as there isn’t any real material to work with for a review. And what’s worse is that my general apathy towards this seems to mirror the people involved in making the film as, if they took the time to build on the emotional impact of what’s going on, maybe this review and the film proper could be a lot more interesting. As it stands, though, it’s a paradoxically dry effort that isn’t worth getting your feet wet over.