So far this year, Disney has released movies exploring to some degree or another: Men’s college basketball (Glory Road), amateur boxing (Annapolis), and elite girls gymnastics (Stick It). Later this year we can look forward to NASCAR (Cars), high school girls basketball (The Heart of the Game), American professional soccer (Once in a Lifetime), competitive dancing (Step Up), and NFL football (Invincible). There’s also The Guadrian in which a top competitive swimmer joins a Coast Guard rescue team.
So it appears that the ESPN-ification of Walt Disney Studios (and its subsidiaries) is nearly complete. This week’s entry, Goal! The Dream Begins fits right in. What you probably don’t know is that it really doesn’t matter if I like this movie. It doesn’t really matter if you see this movie. This movie has already been successful enough that two sequels are already in the works. In fact, the first sequel (Goal 2: Living the Dream) has already been filmed and will open in Europe this summer.
This is not a movie that targets the American audience, and is mostly an aftrethought that it is even being released theatrically in this country.
The problem with so many sports movies coming out is that there really aren’t all that many sports movie plots. You have the grizzled veteran trying to ward off the youngsters. You have the ragtag underdogs going farther than anybody’d think possible. You have the rags-to-riches story of a player plucked from obscurity and given a chance at the big time. You have the misanthrope assigned by a court to coach a team of wisecracking youths and in the process learns something about himself.
Goal! is the third one. Santiago Munez grows up poor in Los Angeles (it is perhaps a case of bad timing to open a movie right now that begins with several Mexican families eluding the U.S. Border Patrol to enter the country illegally). He loves soccer but works several jobs and has a father who believes his proper place is scraping by to make sure the family is fed.
After a washed-up European football scout sees him playing in a local recreational league, Munez is told, “Get yourself to Newcastle and they’ll give you a trial.” His father tells him he has no chance, his grandmother supports him, and eventually he finds his way to northern England—and is fame and fortune in his future? I’m afraid that may already be spoiled by having shared the title of the first sequel.
The movie is made for European and Latin American soccer fans. It assumes you understand how the premiere leagues work, hardly explaining why it is so important that Newcastle win all its final games (major league soccer teams have to win the right to stay in the premiere leagues; it is as if the last place Major League Baseball teams were all demoted to AAA at the end of the season while the best minor league teams were promoted to the major leagues). The point system by which this is decided goes without comment. You are on your own to figure out how each team is structured, with a main team, a reserve team, and then people struggling to get to those teams. A parade of European soccer superstars will also flicker by without much recognition.
None of this is very difficult to figure out but just highlights that the movie isn’t intended for the typical American unfamiliar with anything beyond AYSO soccer played by kids.
Director Danny Cannon (Judge Dredd, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer) keeps the entire enterprise on a slow but steady pace and never lets the story get too excitable. Elements of romance, racism, narcissism, and family obligations all creep in, but generally creep right back out without any real impact or exploration. This is one of those movies where you know from the very beginning where it is going to end up so the ride better be a lot of fun. It never really is.
Kuno Becker does a servicable job as Munez, though for the most part he is just required to look intense. When called on to show some serious emotion, he breaks down a bit and tries too hard; Cannon makes sure there aren’t many opportunities for any real challenge, though. The only other member of the cast given so much as a smidgen of characterization is Alessandro Nivola, playing an egotisticla superstar who quite possibly could learn something about teamwork by the end of the movie.
If the story isn’t all that interesting, how about the soccer? For fans, soccer is an intense game to watch. Ninety minutes of effort punctuated by a few combined minutes of suspenseful action. Fortunately for those people who don’t see the appeal of the effort part, the movie only ever shows the suspenseful parts, boiling each game down to a couple minutes of playtime and some snazzy goals.
The play itself is captured with the proper sense of speed and violence. The players themselves, however, exist almost exclusively as two separate halves. You either see them from the waist down or from the waist up. Rarely does the camera pull back enough to show any true athletics, and the edits are so frequent that there is never any real flow to the action. Still, when on screen the games have a lot more life than the rest of the movie.
The simple unadorned storyline is more likely to resonate with the younger kids, especially if they’re into soccer in a big way. There is some swearing (though in quaint British versions), some boozing, and a couple scantily clad women at a party. Otherwise everything is pretty tame.
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Goal! The Dream Begins is a Touchstone Pictures release.
Wide theatrical release: May 12.
Directed by Danny Cannon
Screenplay by Adrian Butchart
Starring: Kuno Becker, Alessandro Nivola, Tony Plana, Stephen Dillane
Running time: 118 minutes
Rated PG for language, sexual situations, and some thematic material including partying.
Alex’s rating: 4 out of 10.
