It’s fitting that George Clooney’s crowd-pleasing Boys in the Boat focuses on rich and privileged know-it-alls being bested by working-class heroes at the 1936 Olympics.

Fitting, I say, because privileged know-it-alls — i.e., American critics and the left-leaning Hollywood establishment — already do not care for this film; I’m sure it won’t see a single Academy Award nomination.

Indeed, at Rotten Tomatoes, Boys currently holds a dismal 57% approval rating with national critics. But its score with regular old (i.e. working-class) viewers?

Ninety-six.

You can count me among the latter group, of course.

But I do agree that Boys in the Boat is by no means a masterpiece — nor is it the sort of edgy, issue-driven tale that Oscar loves to celebrate these days. In fact, the principal word that kept coming to mind as I enjoyed the movie was: old-fashioned.

It has no sex, no violence and very little swearing. The plot arc, in which an impoverished, ragtag team of junior-varsity rowers eclipses several Ivy League crews to reach the Berlin Olympics — is very predictable. (I should point out, however, that this true story hews pretty close to the facts as recounted in Daniel James Brown’s 2013 bestseller.)

There is not much nuance in the characters — or in the plot or the themes. Yet the movie works.

It works exceptionally well, in fact.

Though the cast is largely unknown, first-rate acting really helps flesh out characters who are not particularly three-dimensional. Joel Edgerton, the only real name-actor in the film, is engaging as the crew’s coach. The handsome Callum Turner, looking for all the world like the next Channing Tatum, is excellent as real-life protagonist Joe Rantz, who must push past personal demons to prevail.

Viewers will also like Jake Mulhern as the muscular but taciturn rower Don Hume. Both his own personal battle in Berlin and the aforementioned struggles by Rantz really did happen — though as far as I can tell, the team’s mishap at the outset of their Olympic race was invented for the film. (I haven’t read the book.)

Alexandre Desplat’s score is sensational, and the movie also boasts superb cinematography; I especially relished a couple of shots that beautifully evoke Depression-era painters Edward Hopper and Maxfield Parrish.

Along the same lines, the period detail is also solid, with seamless computer graphics to fill out some of the background visuals.

I did have two quibbles in this area: Scenes supposedly set in Poughkeepsie don’t look much like the Hudson Valley, where riverside cliffs are much, much higher. Worse yet, the train scene really drops the ball by somehow using a British locomotive, rather than the American-built Alcos and Baldwins employed by the once-mighty Great Northern Railway.

Happily, these minor points don’t detract from the film’s many merits — the greatest of which is its editing: The three racing scenes are just the right length and pace, carefully cycling through multiple close-ups and overhead shots for truly thrilling footage of a sport that might not at first seem terribly cinematic.

Under the able hand of Clooney (who directed but does not star), these scenes alone are worth the admission price; you can’t help but root for the hard-scrabble heroes as they race against odds that are all stacked against them.

Here and throughout, with its traditional feel and underdog triumph, The Boys in the Boat is never subtle; indeed, it kinda wears its heart on its sleeve.

Fortunately, that’s a pretty big heart.