Backwards
Backwards Image
Metascore
42 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 6 Critics What's this?

until movie release
  • Summary: Abigail Brooks has spent her lifetime trying to win an Olympic rowing medal, sacrificing friendship, love, and a "normal life" along the way. When she is named an alternate on the Olympic team she quits in haste. Defeated, Abi moves back home with her widowed, workaholic mother. Tension builds as Abi's mother urges her to "move on" from the rowing life that Abi's father, a coach, introduced her to. Unable to do so, but needing an immediate job, Abi seizes an open crew coach position at her alma mater, Union High. There, the head of athletics is her old boyfriend, Geoff. Abi trains her high school rowers in an obsessive fashion, taking two girls, Hannah and Susan, under her wing. After the girls lose an important regional race, Abi reinvents herself as a coach, and, in the process, learns to have fun again both on the water and off. Backwards is an intimate look at the personal sacrifices and complex choices facing competitive Olympic hopefuls. It is also a film about dreams -- young adults pursuing their dreams... and finding that sometimes a missed opportunity can become an introduction to an entire new life. (DADA Films)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 6
  3. Negative: 1 out of 6
  1. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Sam Adams
    Sep 19, 2012
    75
    Thomas, credited as writer, producer, and executive producer, is the obvious auteur, orchestrating a star vehicle she lacks the screen presence to anchor.
  2. Variety
    Reviewed by: Joe Leydon
    Sep 19, 2012
    50
    Passably pleasant but thoroughly predictable.
  3. Slant Magazine
    Reviewed by: Tomas Hachard
    Sep 18, 2012
    25
    Streamlines its busy set of plots and subplots into a 90-minute sprint, throughout which characters often confront and overcome their obstacles within the same scene.

See all 6 Critic Reviews

User Reviews