True Spirit (now on Netflix) is the rare BOATS (Based On A True Story) movie with actual boats in it! This mini-biopic of sorts stars Teagan Croft of DC TV series Titans as real-life Australian sailor Jessica Watson, who, at 16, was the youngest person ever to complete a solo around-the-world sailing trip. Anna Paquin and Josh Lawson play her concerned parents, and Cliff Curtis is her gruff, seasoned-seafarer coach, who helps her through the storms and doldrums and other hazards of all the oceans of the Earth. Are you ready to be inspired by the overwhelming BOATSiness of this drama? You better be.
TRUE SPIRIT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: SEPT., 2009, AUSTRALIA’S SUNSHINE COAST: Jessica (Croft) is awakened by an awful, awful noise, the sound of her sailboat getting the living crap scraped out of it by a passing ocean liner. Thank Poseidon she was only 20 miles from shore, on a trial run for the real thing, the circumnavigating-the-entire-damn-planet thing. She and her boat with the snapped mast are rescued by Ben Bryant (Curtis), the ol’ sea cap’n who’s her primary aide on this monumental endeavor. Jessica’s intentions are the subject of public scrutiny, with media microphone-waggers, when they’re not oozing slime from their pores, criticizing her parents for allowing her to endanger herself, and bringing up Ben’s tragic past at every opportunity (one of his crew members once died during a sailing race).
But Jessica, well, she’s determined. Single-minded. Searingly focused. All that. Circling the globe is her dream, declared during a dinner-table flashback when she was still a tween (played by Alyla Browne). She struggles with dyslexia, but is that gonna stop her? Nope. Now, she has to fight through the controversy and get her boat, dubbed Pink, fixed for the real magilla, so cue up Colbie Caillat’s ‘Brighter Than the Sun,’ because it’s montage time! Everyone in her home is rooting for her – her three siblings, her concerned mother Julie (Paquin) and her even more concerned father Roger (Lawson), the latter of whom underestimated her conviction. This ain’t no phase, jack. She’s gonna make waves, literally and figuratively.
And so, on 18 Oct. 2009, Ben gives her his lucky pocketknife, Julie tells her “don’t forget to dance in the rain,” her big sister sets up a blog for her, her little sister gives her a stuffed koala and she sets sail – cue Sheppard’s ‘Say Geronimo,’ because remember, Geronimo is something you say when you take a big-ass leap. It’ll be a 200-day journey. She communicates with Ben and her family via satellite phone. She keeps an online video diary. The media keeps tabs on her, ready to celebrate her or give her an I-told-you-so. A CGI whale breaches over yonder as she does stuff with this rope and that rope. So many ropes! She reaches the equator. She bonks her head during a rough storm. She decorates the cabin with tinsel and calls the fam on Christmas. There’s the triumph of rounding Cape Horn, the depressing dregs of the windless equatorial waters. Turns out, 200 days alone on the oceans is plenty of time to stir up metaphors about life and such.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: All is Lost, except Robert Redford is a touch older than our protagonist here. That and Adrift, the 2018 Shailene Woodley vehicle.
Performance Worth Watching: The boilerplate screenplay only gives Croft rudimentary material to work with, but she focuses on maintaining Jessica’s humility in the face of a remarkable achievement, and that’s a smart move.
Memorable Dialogue: Jessica calls home, bleeding after a storm tosses her around:
Julie: You need a doctor!
Jessica: I didn’t pack one of those.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: True Spirit is as generic as its title, feel-good fodder that’s family-friendly but never wholly compelling. It touches all the usual narrative bases – small triumphs and large travails, a falling-out with her gruff mentor, easy antagonists in media skeptics, a moment of extreme peril during which her family fears the worst, etc. And if that feels like artificial, manufactured drama, the unconvincing green-screen FX work only compounds the issue.
Problem is, the film uses vague and simplistic emotional language to tell this story, and banks on its inspirational real-life elements to carry most of the weight. Compare it to All is Lost, which is more of a hardcore survival story, but hones in on the minutiae that keeps its protagonist from filling his lungs with salt water. There’s no observational detail or nuance to Jessica’s problem-solving – when a storm hits, we’re privy to one specificity necessary for her survival, when it surely takes dozens, and we cut between her being jostled roughly in her cabin and Ben and co. back home, gnawing their fingernails while tracking her on a laptop.
Certainly, on its face, Jessica’s story is inspiring, a remarkable achievement. But nothing unexpected occurs in the film, in terms of internal or external drama; you’d think traversing the planet would fundamentally change a person, but the movie isn’t interested in that. She does it because it’s there and you gotta dream big and people cheer her on, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there has to be more to it. HAS to be.
Our Call: SKIP IT. One person’s innocuous viewing is another’s flimsy drama. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.