Every so often, I have a craving to watch The Mighty Ducks, Little Big Giants, or Angels in the Outfield. Of course, on that same front, I also get a regular craving to watch Ice Princess or Clueless, so we probably shouldn’t go by my cravings.
I admit I have problems. And a crush on Trachtenberg.
But on the first two, there is definitely something in them that speaks to me, and I’m assuming many others by the amount of movies that have been made about underdog sports teams, even though lately it has felt like such movies are coming out more and more infrequently.
We know the type, though. You get this team that is just slaughtered at the beginning, mocked by some big bad-ass on the other team. Then this guy comes in and, somehow, revitalizes the team. Could be a coach, could be the new quarterback, and suddenly everyone’s stuck in training montage mode.
The you have your key characters: the quick, smart-mouthed goalie/kicker/waterboy, the two brothers/cousins/best friends who work as a unit, the old guy that no one thinks can make it, the one guy with massive family issues whose dad shows up at a crucial moment, and then, as always, that one kid. You know, that loveable bonehead that the other team charges into and just bounces off of. The one you love to love, but never gets a lot of screen-time.
Michael Dowse’s Goon is about that character.
You might recognize Dowse’s name from the recent Take Me Home Tonight, and you’ll certainly recognize the lead actor playing Douglas Glatt: Seann William Scott. (My favorite roles of his? Wayne in Evolution and Travis in The Rundown. Note: I still make the “kawwKAWWW” noises. Because I never update my references. Just saying.)
Also in or related to this film, we have writer Evan Goldberg (Pineapple Express, Superbad), actor/writer Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder – Hot LZ), Liev Schreiber (SABRETOOTH, FUCK YEEEEEEAH!), Allison Pill (Scott Pilgrim – the drummer, Kim Pine), and Marc-Andre Grondin, who isn’t really on the American film scene yet, but is so hipstery hot in this movie I have to mention him.
Based on the true story of minor league hockey player, Doug Smith, Goon is about Douglas Glatt (Scott), and his unlikely foray into the world of hockey.
Foraying.
There are multiple things going on at the beginning of this film. First, we get introduced to Ross Rhea (Sabreto–, er, Schreiber. But could you imagine Sabretooth on ice skates?! Amazing!), the unofficial reigning champion of beating ass on ice. What’s he doing when we get introduced to him? Knitting. That’s right. Come on people, keep up! He’s beating ass on ice!
Then we move to Mr. Doug Glatt at his place of employment– a bar. He’s a bouncer, so we slide into a montage of what he does as a bouncer, which segues into him hanging out with his friend and psychotic hockey fan, Pat (Baruchel), and goes into an odd moment where Glatt starts bemoaning his goal-less station in life.
See, Doug is the loser of his family. His father (Eugene Levy) and (gay) brother are both doctors, his mother is… married to a doctor, (Is that an achievement? I suppose.), and Pat is running a successful hocket-based web show called “Hot Ice”.
It’s a slapstick comedy show.
To get him out of his depressive funk, Pat takes Doug to a local hockey game and loads him with corndogs. While both happily feeding their maws, one of the hockey players begins to mouth off about “fags”. Being his usual quirky asshole-self, Pat starts massively heckling the guy, who climbs out of the box with intent of beating Pat into little heckle-less bits.
However, Doug takes offense to the unnamed player’s use of “fags” and steps up, beating the guy into a little bloody mess and, for the climax, Doug headbutts the guy so hard his helmet splits into two.
This catches the eye of one of the coaches and, shortly thereafer, Doug is recruited. Insert clips of him being introduced to the team, beating their asses, being unable to skate, and finally getting transferred to a bigger Canadian team, the Halifax Highlanders.
Disclaimer: This picture has nothing to do with either the above or below paragraphs.
The Highlanders have a problem. They have an amazing player, La Flamme (Grondin), who is afraid to really play hockey. During a previous game some time prior, Sabretooth (Rhea) (Schrieber), slammed into La Flamme so hard that he almost died. Since then, La Flamme has been a skittish little kitten, unable to play to his full potential and instead consuming a lot of coke. No, not the soda.
It is the coach’s hope that, with Glatt to protect him, La Flamme might be able to play again and the Highlanders might actually get out of their slump. Unfortunately, there are several problems, starting with La Flamme’s attitude, ending with Glatt’s inability to skate, and in the middle there’s some issue with team spirit and unity. It’s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich of suck on ice.
There’s also the matter of Eva (Pill), Doug’s love interest, who already has a boyfriend but can’t seem to keep herself away from Doug.
Still bitter over Scott.
I’ve noticed a good deal of the PR about this movie seems to focus on how the real conflict of this movie is Glatt’s lack of skating ability, but such is not the case.
How do I know this? Because there’s never any resolution to his childish skating. There’s never any montage of him stumbling by himself on the ice, never any montage of him being trained by a fellow player or coaches. It’s basically, “Huh. You can’t skate. Okay, then. We’re going to make fun of you for a bit and move on.”
Did I like this movie? It definitely had many great moments, things that made me laugh out loud (sometimes by myself, which was kinda awkward in a small theater with maybe eight other people), though nothing made me actually tip over in my seat (that honor has been reserved, thus far, for Bridesmaids and the home-birthing sequence in The Back-up Plan).
Stood up by Wolverine. Poor guy.
I was actually surprised by this movie at some points. It’s ninety minutes long– an hour and a half– and Dowse made sure not to waste a single minute of film. There’s a lot packed into a tiny space and, at times, it felt as though the stereotypical moments we’d expect were discarded.
In most sports movies, there’s a lot of character-driven scenes. Intimate moments, breakdowns, confessionals, unexpected bonding. There wasn’t a lot of that in this movie (though there was some). What this movie was mostly carried on was Scott’s ability to convey Glatt’s character (something I wrote in my notes as “channeling his inner golden retriever”) through every scene, even the most inconsequential.
I’ve always been a Seann Williams Scott fan, and even though I won’t watch a decent chunk of his films (like Dude, Where’s My Car?… I just can’t do it), it was really good to see that my faith in him was justified.
So if you want to watch a fun, oddly witty, hockey movie with some epic on-the-ice fights, Goon is available On Demand on February 24th and in theaters on March 30th. You can see where it is going to be playing and check out the trailer here in the meantime.