Metacritic reviews

Young Woman and the Sea puts its own twist on the inspirational sports movie, with a powerful turn from Daisy Ridley.

It all adds up to a genuinely affecting, Seabiscuit-style underdog tale, which will get you cheering dogged Trudy past 10ft waves, a shoal of stinging jellyfish, and a plague of obstructive men. That salty liquid on your face isn’t sea water – it’s tears.

The broader history is there for those who are curious and on its own terms this is a story that will keep you engaged. Much of that has to do with Ridley.

Rønning unfurls the journey with tension and then triumph, even if some of the storytelling leans towards the formulaic.

The film keeps things simple, but it shines like a lighthouse in the darkness nonetheless.

It’s good enough, rousing enough, compelling enough.

It’s rote, sure, but undeniably rousing.

Young Woman is a biopic with all sharp edges removed, the kind of non-threatening, inspirational Disney movie that teachers screen for fidgety students on the last day of fourth grade.

It’s long and sometimes gets swept astray by currents of family drama and period detail, but Ridley’s plucky determination and can-do energy carries the whole thing along. The result is an old-fashioned inspirational pleasure.

The new biopic Young Woman and the Sea presents Eberle’s life as a broadly inspiring parable of female striving and triumph, its plot points readily mapped onto any struggle to break into a boys’ club.