GOAT

Year 18, Day 255 - 9/12/26 - Movie #5,429

BEFORE: We've got the "After School Special" week coming up later in the month, this is a series of screenings arranged by my boss, the theater manager, that feature work from alumni of the college, and this year we've got "Anora" and "K-Pop Demon Hunters" screening, I may pop in to see one or both of those, but, you know, I can also watch them at home. But in April of this year we also had a special screening of "GOAT", arranged by the school's animation department, because Adam Rosette, one of the directors, is also an alumnus. I had a chance to talk to him before the screening, you know, let him know I produced a couple of features myself, and he seemed like a pretty cool guy. I wasn't able to watch the film that day, but I made a mental note to get to it, down the road, when I could. 

The voice of Eduardo Franco carries over from "Hoppers". And we're going to send an increasingly rare Birthday SHOUT-out to Jennifer Hudson, born on 9/12/1981.

THE PLOT: A small goat with big dreams gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to join the pros and play roarball, a high-intensity, co-ed, full contact sport dominated by the fastest, fiercest animals in the world. 

AFTER: This is a surprisingly not-terrible film about animals playing basketball - sorry, ROAR-ball in this world where animals can all talk and have human-like personalities and wear human-like clothing and play human-like sports. This feels a bit like an off-shoot of the "Zootopia" world, except that just can't be, because one film is owned by Disney and the other is owned by Sony, and well, you see how that worked out for Spider-Man movies, most of the Sony ones ("Venom", "Morbius", "Madame Web") have to take place in a different universe for legal and copyright reasons. So that means that there is ALSO a multiverse for animal-based CGI movies, and different cities across that multiverse where animals live together in harmony, or sometimes the opposite of that. 

But if there WERE sports in the Zootopia zoo-niverse, they might look something like this. Or who knows, maybe Disney wouldn't go this far with it, and they would all just play badminton or chess or something, no major-league sports with falling stalactites or lava floors or ice-based basketball courts that could shatter at any time if the right animal stomps their foot. The roar-ball here is VERY strategy oriented, based on the animals playing and what their environment is. There's definitely a home-field advantage if you're used to playing around vines or volcanic lava or an ice-sheet, and your opponent isn't. 

But still, it comes down to getting a ball through a hoop, or "basket" and still there are plays to memorize and there are fouls called (or not called) and three-pointers and all that. So come on, it's basketball, just with extras. And longtime Roarball star Jett Fillmore is the best player on her team, the Vineland Thorns. But she's getting older and physically that means she's not playing as good as she used to - the simple solution would be to get her some teammates who could also play well, but I guess that never occurred to the owner of the team. Or maybe there's no draft in roarball, no college roarball to train players who want to work their way up to the majors, or anything like that. The animal world is a lot more loosey-goosey, I guess, and sometimes with actual gooses. 

You just KNOW there was a story meeting about what other animals can play basketball, at least theoretically. So the thorns also have an ostrich (fast runner), a giraffe (very tall, obvi), a rhino (big, can block and obviously take a hit) and a Komodo dragon (umm, crazy like Dennis Rodman?). I'm guessing a lot of thought went into picking those animals and thinking about how they might play basketball differently. The other teams in the league have horses, gorillas, even polar bears, and you know, different plays and different strategies for different animals, I guess. There's not really a lot of time here to get into all of the nuts and bolts of it, but it's probably a weird, wild, Animal Kingdom world of sports. One thing is for sure, all of these animals are "Bigs", and they don't let "Smalls" into roarball. 

Well, along comes Will Harris, a goat, who wants to change all of that - he's been a roarball fan since he was a kid (two meanings) and thinks that if he works hard enough, practices every day, and finds a way to go viral against all conceivable odds, he might have a shot. Sure enough, somebody tapes a pick-up game between him and Mane Attraction, a Big horse who's on another team but is in town to play the Thorns. Will can't possibly beat Mane, but just the fact that he TRIED is a major deal, and a video does go viral, and it's seen by the Thorns' team owner, who needs a sixth player on her team, because with only five, if any animal should get injured, there's nobody to sub in, so that's an automatic forfeit. You'd think there would be rules against leaving that sixth spot open, but I guess not. Flo Everson signs Will as the sixth player, and keeps "guaranteeing" that he'll play the next game, but Jett uses her influence to make sure that the coach never puts him in. So he's just a bench-warmer, he's still on the team, right? And people keep tuning in to see what will happen when he finally gets put in a game (he'll probably get squished, but you know, some fans want to see that happen, too.)

The other team members don't treat Will well at first, either, but when a player DOES get injured, Will finally gets a shot at playing real roarball, and since he actually studied and remembers the plays, unlike the others, they go on to win that game. Go figure. But even after that, and even after Jett and Will have one of those "outside the stadium, over the lights, through the trees, bounce at halfcourt, nothing but net" games of HORSE that were made famous in McDonald's commercials (featuring Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, I think) Jett still doesn't want to let Will play often (but she knows he can sink a basketball from a distance, that might be important later on in the film...).

Then the film works in a twist similar to one seen in the "Major League" film - the owner actually WANTS the team to lose so she can move it to another city, sell it and cash out. Well, this would explain why she signed a small goat. This makes Jett more determined than ever to have a winning season before she (and the rest of the team) are released if they won't move. So Jett goes out and wins the next game practically by herself, her team moves on to the playoffs but the team members don't want to play on her team any more. What is a team without it's players, and isn't a team only as strong as its weakest link. Jett finally has to learn how to pass the ball, which is hard for her, being the team superstar at all. But it's a great message for the kids, that one person can't succeed without a team behind them, or even side-by-side. 

All the Thorns show some kind of personal growth, too - the ostrich learns to take her head out of the sand and be proud, the giraffe learns it's OK to play for ten teams in ten years, the rhino learns that defending his teammates is also an important role to play, and the Komodo dragon learns to play poker against the right people to become a team owner himself. 

There is a live-action analog to the story of a smaller player succeeding in a major-league situation - one was a prank, that was covered in the movie "The Saint of Second Chances", when Bill Veeck, manager of the St. Louis Browns, put a little person, Eddie Gaedel, in to bat for the Browns, with a very small strike zone. The other is NBA player Spud Webb, who at 5 foot 7 was one of the shortest players in NBA history. Yet he won the 1986 Slam Dunk Contest at the All-Star event. Some people said he would never be drafted into the NBA, but he proved them all wrong, and he played his own game, his way, and I think that's at least some of the inspiration for the goat character here. And I'm glad this isn't just a one-joke film, playing off the double meaning of "GOAT". 

Directed by Tyree Dillyhay & Adam Rosette

Also starring the voices of Caleb McLaughlin (last seen in "Concrete Cowboy"), Gabrielle Union (last seen in "Riff Raff"), Stephen Curry, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan (last seen in "Barbie"), David Harbour (last seen in "A Working Man"), Nick Kroll (last seen in "Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!"), Patton Oswalt (ditto), Jenifer Lewis (last heard in "Spellbound"), Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson (last seen in "Adam Sandler: Funny Guy"), Sherry Cola (last seen in "Good Fortune"), Andrew Santino (last seen in "Happy Gilmore 2"), Bobby Lee (last seen in "Borderlands"), Wayne Knight (last seen in "Beyond 'JFK': The Question of Conspiracy"), Ayesha Curry (last seen in "Irish Wish"), Savannah Van Van McConneaughey, Rayaan Kamal Khan, Adam Pally (last seen in "A.C.O.D."), Angel Reese (last seen in "A House of Dynamite"), Joe La Puma, Erin Andrews (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Andre Iguodala, A'ja Wilson (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Mike Breen, Kevin Love, Dwyane Wade (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Tarek Bishara (last seen in "The Tale"), Aaron Buchsbaum, Michelle Cabalu, Luke Cimity, Libby Thomas Dickey (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation"), Tyree Dillihay, Addison Foote, Liam Knight (last heard in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part"), Angelo Kouyate, Michelle Raimo, Aaron LaPlante (last heard in "Fixed"), Derek Mio (last heard in "The Emoji Movie"), Cassius Peyton, Kingston Peyton, Teddy Riley, Lashana Rodriguez (last heard in "Turbo"), Adam Rosette, David Schulenburg, Jessica Schulte (last seen in "Wicker Park"), Melissa Sturm (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish")

RATING: 6 out of 10 baby gerbils