Your next family movie night should feature ‘Young Woman and the Sea’

Even though many people recommended that I watch Disney’s “Young Woman and the Sea” with my two daughters, it took me a while to get around to it.
Honestly, that’s because it sounded a little boring.
I confused “Young Woman and the Sea” with the “Lady of the Lake” — the woman who, according to legend, presented the Excalibur sword to King Arthur. I’ve never had much interest in medieval lore, with the exception of “The Sword in the Stone.” But my love for that movie is focused mainly on the part where Merlin and Arthur turn into squirrels, and as far as I know, that segment is not canonical to the actual story of King Arthur.
So a movie about the Lady of the Lake was probably not for me.
But then a loved one explained that “Young Woman and the Sea” is actually about the first woman to swim across the English Channel in the 1920s, and I became significantly more interested because I love a good sports biopic — especially when it’s about a woman overcoming impossible odds and especially when it’s a period piece. The question became whether my kids would be as hyped on the idea as I was.
“Young Woman and the Sea” grossed very little during its time in theaters earlier this summer, but earned an 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and a “generally favorable” score of 62 on Metacritic. The film was originally intended to premiere straight to streaming on Disney+, but got a limited release after testing well. Now it lives where it was always meant to live — on living room screens where parents and children can watch together.
Which is what we did.
I gathered my daughters (ages 12 and 9) and bribed them with a movie night if they got all their homework completed in time. They did, because bribery is a pretty effective parenting tool and we had plenty of time to watch “Young Woman and the Sea” before bed. I was worried, however, that they might get bored at some point during the run time of two hours and nine minutes. The movie is, after all, a period biopic, which is not a genre that typically screams “perfect for tweens.”
But this movie is perfect for tweens. And 9-year-olds. And even my 5-year-old son, who was supposed to be in bed, watched a good portion with us. Yes, he was just trying to delay bedtime, and he spent a lot of time asking if Daisy Ridley was the same woman from “Jaws,” a movie I showed him a few minutes of during a severe lapse in judgment and a movie that was made 20 years before Daisy Ridley was born, but still. He was riveted.
Ridley stars as Gertrude Ederle — or Trudy, as she’s called throughout the film — the daughter of German immigrants living in New York City. After a near-death brush with the measles as a child, she learns to swim and becomes one of the best female swimmers in the world. After a disappointing Paris Olympics, she decides to set her sights on swimming the English Channel, a feat previously only completed by a few men.
The film also stars Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Trudy’s sister, Meg; Sian Clifford as Trudy’s coach, Charlotte Epstein; and Stephen Graham as Bill Burgess, the second man to swim across the channel. It is Burgess’ reported propensity to swim naked, and a shot of Graham’s bare back side, that contribute to the film’s PG rating.
This movie has its flaws. Some of the British actors’ attempts at New York accents are a bit wacky. The dialogue was exposition-heavy at times and little eye-rolly at others. But Ridley gives a world-class performance, the cinematography is beautiful, and the story is engaging and inspiring. I even cried a few times. To be fair, I cry a lot lately, but I was genuinely moved by the endurance of Trudy Ederle and the world that rallied around her, wanting her to succeed. More importantly, my kids loved it.
“Young Woman and the Sea” feels like the kind of movie I used to watch with my mom on the living room couch. Movies like “Little Women” and “Anne of Green Gables.” Movies that I feel like we don’t get enough of anymore, maybe because they don’t perform as well as the flashier intellectual property movies studios now tend to focus on. But I hope “Young Woman and the Sea” does well on streaming because I’d love to have more inspiring, female-centric movies to watch with my daughters. And more movies to bribe them to get their homework done on time.
“Young Woman and the Sea” is streaming on Disney+ and is rated PG. You can watch the trailer here.