BEFORE: This is it, the end of the line for sports, I'm clearing the category tonight. I've learned quite a bit, and I didn't expect to discover that all sports movies are essentially the same, but that's about where I've found myself. With that, it's time to move on to other topics. Linking from "Goon", Eugene Levy was in "For Your Consideration" with Paul Dooley (last heard in "Cars 2"), who has a cameo in tonight's film as a hockey announcer.
THE PLOT: A failing ice hockey team finds success using constant fighting and violence during games.
AFTER: I'm going to tread a little lightly tonight, since this film might actually be the progenitor of modern sports movies, the ones that are more comedy-oriented and not just bio-pics of famous athletes like Jim Thorpe or Jackie Robinson. It's not hard to see "Major League" as a direct descendant of this film, someone just changed the sport from hockey to baseball and wrapped up the Hanson brothers in a Charlie Sheen-shaped ball and re-named him "Wild Thing".
But even with that in mind, I found this film to be pretty disjointed. It sort of came off as a collection of wild anecdotes, rather then a strong connected narrative. I get that the team might be shut down, I get that there's a plan to save the team, but I feel that it might be a nice idea to clue the audience in on exactly what the plan is, and how it works.
Again, not understanding the mechanics of hockey, it's hard for me to follow the steps - we start fighting more at the games, more people get interested, attendance goes up, and the team is saved. Umm, OK, if you say so. But if the mill is closing in the town, doesn't that mean that people will have LESS money, and be LESS likely to spend money on something frivolous like hockey tickets? It's just tough to follow the logic, that's all.
I'm once again how genuine the actors are - did they cast real meatheads to play meatheads, or are the actors just that good? I could kind of believe the Hansons are the "real deal", but they're also too much like stereotypes of hockey goons to be taken seriously, so I'm a little confused.
The sexual politics and locker-room talk were a little confusing, too. Admittedly I was not an adult during the swinging 70's, but I can sort of extrapolate. You'd expect a depiction of athletes to include a lot of screwing around on road trips, and there is some of that here, but less than I'd expect. Some of the players are married, and marriage is depicted as sort of a less-than-ideal situation, which perhaps it is for some. But all of the gay + lesbian references seem a little off, as if the writer didn't fully understand those orientations. A woman who is married to a man but also sleeps with women would today be called bisexual, not a "raging dyke". And twice in the film, people wonder that if a man has a lesbian wife, does that make him a "fag"? Umm, unless he's also sleeping with men, then no, that's not really how it works.
NITPICK POINT: Even in the minor leagues of hockey, I find it hard to believe that a team would be allowed to go to the playoffs with a different line-up of players than the one they used during the regular season. There's got to be some rule about this, right? It makes for a great film moment when the opposing team is shown to be stocked with goons, but who allowed this to happen? There is simply a point before the post-season where the roster has to be locked - I'm not a sports expert but I'm fairly sure about this.
Also starring Paul Newman (last seen in "The Long, Hot Summer"), Michael Ontkean (last seen in "The Descendants"), Strother Martin (last seen in "Cool Hand Luke"), Jennifer Warren, Lindsay Crouse (last seen in "The Verdict"), Jerry Houser, Swoosie Kurtz (last seen in "Reality Bites"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Youth in Revolt"), Andrew Duncan, Brad Sullivan.
RATING: 4 out of 10 radio interviews
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