Young Washington review: Meh George Washington origin story fails to inspire

Running time: 125 minutes.PG-13 (Some bloody images, strong war violence).

In theaters.During a 1755 battle in “Young Washington,” future U.S.president George Washington dangerously runs toward the enemy French and their Native American allies alone and clutching a gun.“He’s making himself a target,” a stunned fellow soldier says.Parts of that depiction of early heroism are shown in slow motion, almost like “Captain America,” in director Jon Erwin’s movie, and the music swells.

It’s the textbook formula for goosebumps.And yet I defy you to feel anything while watching it. Although so-so “Young Washington” fulfils its baseline promise — Look! Washington! While young! — it doesn’t accomplish much more than that.

The film succeeds in neither humanizing him nor deifying him, and so the Revolutionary War hero comes across as strangely milquetoast.He’s a striver, sure, but here he’s not an especially exciting or extraordinary one. What the founder?! Stories about far less appreciated American history heroes such as HBO’s “John Adams” miniseries with Paul Giamatti and the Broadway musical “Hamilton” have ably proved what singular and inspiring figures those men were.

“Hamilton” still packs ‘em in nightly, and it’s about the father of the treasury.Next to them, the mythic Washington would seem a no-brainer.But this is a rudimentary tale, if an accurate and informative one, of ascendancy without edge or energy and with out-of-sync performances from just about everybody. None more so than the title whippersnapper.

Model and occasional actor William Franklyn-Miller plays a George with a skincare routine.He’s a lowly tenant farmer who dreams of being an officer in the British army.

Virginia-born George is meant to be the earthy colonial contrast to all the prissy and entitled Brits around him.However, you wouldn’t know that from the actor’s “huh? whaaa?” air of casual bemusement. Franklyn-Miller is CW modern...