Everything is not quite kosher in Mike Dowse’s GOON, which explores the bloodier side of the great sport of hockey
GOON (Mike Dowse, 2012)
Opens Friday, March 30
www.magnetreleasing.com
Mike Dowse’s ultraviolent hockey comedy, Goon, comes along at a pivotal moment in the history of the NHL. More than ever before, the league is disciplining most kinds of physical contact that result in injuries, particularly concussions, following the early death of three current and former enforcers last summer. Fighting, however, has been allowed to continue, regularly argued that fisticuffs are necessary in order to avoid other, more vicious attacks on the ice. Somehow Dowse and cowriters Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express) and Jay Baruchel manage to skirt the more serious issues, making a very funny, extremely lowbrow movie that truly honors the sport that it loves so much while celebrating the bloodier aspects of the game. Seann William Scott (American Pie) stars as Doug Glatt, a none-too-swift Jewish bouncer whose parents (Eugene Levy and Ellen David) could not be more disappointed in him. When a minor-league hockey coach sees Glatt lay out one of his players who jumped into the crowd, he decides to turn Glatt into a hockey goon — but first he has to teach him how to skate. Soon Glatt is promoted to a better league, where his fists make him an instant star and lead to a growing fan club headed by his best friend, Pat (Baruchel), and Eva (Alison Pill), a self-admitted slut whom Glatt immediately falls for. As Glatt’s team starts winning, the hockey world prepares for the ultimate showdown between the up-and-coming Glatt and living legend Ross “the Boss” Rhea (noted thespian Liev Schreiber), a nasty player who wants to go out with one last bang before he retires. You don’t have to know much about hockey to get a kick out of Goon, which was inspired by real-life enforcer Douglas Smith’s book, Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into a Minor Hockey League, as well as the escapades of minor league fighter Mike Bajurny and Baruchel’s own father, who played on a Jewish youth team when he was a kid. The film is filled with offensive jokes that sometimes teeter on that fine line between funny and homophobic, but such locker-room talk is ultimately trumped by the film’s endearing good nature that makes it likable even when it crosses various lines of ethics and taste. There have been fewer than twenty movies made about hockey, from the classic (Slap Shot) to the solid (Miracle, The Rocket), to the absurd (Youngblood, MVP: Most Valuable Primate). Goon might not be in the same league as Slap Shot, but it can stand its ground and duke it out with the best of the rest. (Stick around for the closing credits, which include video of some of Smith’s greatest battles.)