But back to Young Washington, which is doing brisk business at the box office while its only competition in major release, the aggressively hyped Monsters & Minions, suffers from “franchises fatigue” and fading profits. It was canny to release Young Washington on the Fourth of July weekend during the notoriously uncelebrated 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. In fact, it’s downright amazing that the major Hollywood conglomerates could come up with nothing better than Monsters & Minions for a holiday weekend that used to be one of the most reliably profitable in the entire calendar.

As many of the extremely mixed reviews will tell you, Young Washington is an earnest but dull and often ludicrous account of Washington’s ambitious early manhood that has the quality of many a stodgy “after-school special.” William Franklyn-Miller as Washington plays him as a stupendously handsome young supermodel making an arrogant idiot of himself on the battlefield but learning important lessons at the expense of his own slaughtered men. Once he figures out that he must fight for God and country (which is Virginia, in his view) as well as his suffering soldiers, rather than just to advance himself in the eyes of haughty British officers whose ranks he’s desperate to join, he becomes the legendary Washington, God’s chosen hunk, fearless and unkillable in battle, an inspiration to all.

To be fair, it’s rather commendable to make so much of the film about Washington’s frustrated ambitions and self-centered determination to climb the social ranks from obscure colonist to British officer at a time when the Brits regarded the colonists as lowly rustics. And to focus on Washington’s nadir, leading the Virginia militia to abject defeat in their attempt to force the French out of then-frontier territory in Ohio claimed by the British as well as the Shawnee and other Native American tribes. Washington’s rickety “Fort Necessity” was abandoned before it was fully built.

The reckless Washington was sent off on a suicidal mission by the Scottish Governor Robert Dinwiddie (Ben Kingsley), an administrator in charge of British forces in the colonies. Washington had only a ragtag, badly equipped colonial force. In the movie, it’s a little obscure why Dinwiddie does this, because the resulting debacle was bound to reflect badly on him. What’s left out of the narrative — and it’s a shame — was Dinwiddie’s hawkish warmongering reflecting an attitude among prominent Virginians that the Ohio Territory was rightfully theirs: “He had wanted a war over the Ohio valley,” according to historian David Stewart. “After Fort Necessity, he had one.”

Washington is forced to surrender to the sneering French and to rely on a British officer and translator to tell him what the treaty says. The loss of a proper aristocratic education in Great Britain when he was young, which would’ve included learning French, costs Washington dearly — because the translator doesn’t tell him when he signs the treaty that he’s also taking the blame for the killing of a French officer. A case can be made that George Washington started the French and Indian War by firing the first reckless shot that led to the disastrous battle. In the movie, he’s innocent of that blunder and demands to know who fired first, but according to some historical accounts, it may very well have been him.

In broad strokes anyway, much of the Young Washington narrative is true. Washington’s father died young, which meant a loss of fortune and status that prevented George from being sent to England to be educated in proper upper-class fashion as his older brothers had been. In the movie, he’s shown as a boy being denied an education at the local schoolhouse, because now he’s got to help his harassed mother (Mary-Louise Parker) run their mere tenant farm on the Mount Vernon property inherited by George’s half-brother Lawrence (John Foss). The suggestion in the film seems to be that they’re leading a hardscrabble life, but they’re really just socially demoted to a lower rank of gentry. And no amount of local schoolhouse education would’ve helped him much in Virginia high society.

George Washington didn’t recover his lost wealth and status until much later when Lawrence’s widow remarried and relocated, allowing him to take back control of the Mount Vernon plantation. That plus his rapid military advancement did much, but what really carried him to the top was marrying the vastly wealthy and aristocratic Martha Dandridge Custis, bringing him a 17,000-acre estate worked by hundreds of slaves. This will presumably be part of the Young Washington sequel already in the works. Though what part Washington’s slave ownership will play remains to be seen. It’s only vaguely touched on in Young Washington, with a few black actors playing slaves in the background and George Washington referring briefly to Mount Vernon’s slaves: “We have many of them.”

George Washington’s love life in this first film involves his heavy flirtation with Sally Fairfax (Mia Rodgers), which plays out like some absurd Bridgerton episode. She’s an unmarried Virginia belle who’s far above his station in life and bound to wed someone of equal rank. In real life, Washington’s fling with Sally, well-documented in letters, occurred after she was already married.

And Washington was by no means so friendly with Native Americans as he’s shown being with Tanacharison (Ryan Begay), Seneca chief and leader of one of the few tribes in the disputed territory that aligned with the British even briefly. The French were known to treat Native Americans better than the British, though you’d never guess it from the scowling cartoonish villain playing the French Canadian commanding officer Joseph Jumonville (Clement Toyon). He makes John Cleese’s inventively insulting French soldier guarding the fort in Monty Python and the Holy Grail seem well-mannered by comparison. (“I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”)

The last section of the film involves Washington’s redemptive return to the fight against the French, which is all heroics on his part. The second time around, it’s the British General Braddock (Andy Serkis) in charge, with the demoted Washington as his mere aide-de-camp trying to make his commander see reason. It’s the general’s turn to screw everything up in the most mortifying way. All the famous British blunders we learned about in fourth grade — knowing nothing of the rough densely forested terrain, insisting on gentlemanly frontal charges, and those idiotic red coats like showy targets on every soldier’s back — are on display here. Braddock gets killed saying “Who would’ve believed it?” Washington takes command, and suddenly the rustic colonial fighting style is born.

This was indeed the battle that began to create Washington’s outsize military reputation for fearlessness, daring, and weird good fortune under fire, earning the admiration of his soldiers. He was unusually tall for his time, making him an excellent target on horseback, yet he reportedly came out of the battle with bullet holes in both his hat and his uniform, while he somehow emerged unscathed. His horses were not so lucky — two were shot out from under him, though these grim incidents aren’t depicted in the film. Instead, we get images of Washington standing godlike in misty light, and Native Americans affirming that he’s been chosen by “the Great Spirit” for some stupendous fate.

This finale accords with right-wing conservatives’ reverent view of the Founding Fathers as demigods that walked the earth in order to Make America Great the first time around, conforming to Angel Studios ideology. If you actually read a book by any sane historian, of course, it’s the overwhelming fallibility and often venality of almost everyone involved in the founding of the not-very-united United States, leading to corrupt dealmaking and every kind of compromise of the ideals of liberty and equality from the start, that makes it amazing any nation at all ever got pulled together out of such a hellish mess.