Country:
USA/Canada
Recognizable Faces:
Sean William Scott
Jau Baruchel
Liev Schreiber
Marc-André Grondin
Kim Coates
Eugene Levy
Directed By:
Michael Dowse
I am Canadian and therefore hockey is hard coded somewhere deep in the molecular structure of my being. Whenever a game is on TV and I am within a mile radius of a broadcasting T.V, the airwaves send a message to my reptilian brain that say: "Big men, skating fast on shiny ice, hitting each other and scoring goals in the pursuit of glory. Quick, grab beer and go watch". We have a culture of the sport here. Dirty, thrill-seeking jocks, beer, boobs, sluts, violence and vandalism. It's as close as we'll ever get to the Vikings. 1977 movie SLAPSHOT, with Paul Newman embodies what hockey means to Canadian people. Michael Dowse's GOON had a lot to live up to. While it's not great cinema (not at all), it had its fair share of hockey jokes and it understands the meaning and the beauty of the sport as this last microcosm where men can still wage war under a somewhat safe set of rules. GOON is not art, but it's not trying to be and its rather satisfying if you're not looking for a gem.
Massachusetts kid Doug Glatt (Scott) strayed from the familial path. He became a doorman, when his father and his brother are both doctors. He's looking for something to belong to, somewhere where he would fit. As a local hockey team's game, his friend and local hockey show host Ryan (Baruchel) pisses a player from their own team and Doug steps in to defend him. He's offered a tryout to become the team's enforcer and one thing leads to another, Doug stumbled into the American Hockey League*, with the job to defend the team's superstar Xavier Laflamme (Grondin), who is on a slippery slope since he got injured by legendary enforcer Ross Rhea (Schreiber) a while ago. It's a new life for Doug and one hell of a new challenge, to turn a bunch of losers are and give them a little pride.
Nobody really stands out in the cast, except maybe for Liev Schreiber who plays a very interesting, nuanced bad guy. Ross Rhea is the enemy, but he's also a career hockey player with no illusions about his task description. You can feel through his acting, the wear and tear of the nomadic lifestyle of career minor leaguers. Really, he's above whatever you have already seen from hockey movies, whether it's SLAPSHOT or the politically correct MIGHTY DUCKS. Quick word for Alison Pill also, who made me laugh with her neurotic girlfriend shtick.
I know. Typing the summary of the movie, I realized it looks boring and cliché as hell. GOON's achille's heel is its script. It's pretty terrible, to tell you the truth. Eva is portrayed decently by Alison Pill, but she doesn't have much to do with the story. She's the love interest, because the protagonist must have a love interest. She's a vector of girlfriend jokes. I had to look up Jay Baruchel's character name on IMDB because I didn't remember it from the movie. He's just a vector of jokes, also. You could have left both characters out to focus only on Doug and the movie would have probably been better, but maybe not as crass and funny. But as bad as the script is, it's the only place where GOON looses some major points. The humor is gross, immature, depraved and nothing short of hilarious. I watched it with two other guys and we spent half of our time holding our ribs and wiping the laughter tears from our face.
GOON's strongest point is that it knows what it's trying to be. A spoof of hockey culture that is. It's not missing the mark. It makes fun of the inherent violent of the sport, the self-destructive party habits of its players, the thousands of girlfriend issues it causes, the belligerent, partisan crowds, etc. I walked in the theater only expecting to laugh and in that regard, GOON did what it was supposed to do. If you're looking for a good, clever movie, look elswhere. This is clearly not the second coming of THE BIG LEBOWSKI. But it's a good time with a lot of low-brow humor. A film you want to watch with a large group of people who have very different taste in cinema. They will all agree that it's a bad film with a tremendous sense of humor.
SCORE: 69% **
*Well, it's fictional equivalent. Really.
** For those who have seen the film, pun intended