REVIEW: Goon

Goon. By the title alone, you should know what you're getting yourself in for. A slapstick, stupid, brain-dead film (that's about Ice Hockey, if you managed to read a quick plot synopsis before you could pop to the cinema). A picture of the battered and bruised Seann William Scott on the poster should clue you in that violence is involved. And finally, the claim that it's the new comedy (from the co-writer of) 'Superbad' and 'Pineapple Express' should also give you a clue as to what the jokes are like.

However, strangely enough, 'Goon' doesn't really deliver on any of these... oh, except the violence, the violence is definitely there.

I was surprised to spend most of the time in the cinema watching a romantic comedy film woven in-between a story about a new and failing ice hockey player. Seann William Scott plays the character, Doug Glatt who is a dim-witted bouncer who is soon picked up by a failing ice-hockey team because he is good with his fists. Shortly after that, he is swept up in another failing team in order to bring some 'mojo' back to their play (aka. make sure that all the opponents are "dealt with" if they mess with any of Glatt's team). While the film sets up the failing team's lack of wins as the main problem, this is soon solved by the half way point, and what's left is a film that aimlessly tries to provide our main character Glatt with a new love interest (Alison Pill as 'Eva') and then have Glatt face off against his predecessor "goon", Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber).

And that's exactly the film's problem. Once Glatt's team has finally won their first game, there is no real reason for the film to continue. Glatt gets his girl with no real main issues or problems to overcome and the face-off at the end between Glatt and Rhea is a bit of an anti-climax, mainly because Rhea is never really properly developed as a character. We know he is a "goon", like Glatt (someone hired for the hockey team, purely for the fact that they can fight, not play), but we don't know anything else about him.

It is there that lies another problem with the film. The characters are really quite flat. The film has been compared to 'Dodgeball', but the reason that 'Dodgeball' is a much better film is because it was more of an ensemble piece, whereas 'Goon' only really introduces us properly to Glatt and one other player of the team and the manager. However, we only really get to know Glatt properly, as the other characters were paper-thin.

The final issue I had with 'Goon' was that it was just not very funny. I wanted to go in and have a laugh every minute (like I did when I first watched 'Dodgeball'), but I don't know if it's because I've grown up a bit or that the film just wasn't that funny, but I didn't laugh much at all. I cringed quite a bit from all the gratuitous violence and the amount of swearing (call me a prude, but there was a lot of swearing) but I didn't really laugh all that much.

I wanted to like 'Goon' as much as I liked 'Dodgeball', I really did. But, unfortunately I didn't. What I ended up seeing was a little bit of a boring sports drama, with a few jokes and a love story tossed in half way through. Go and see 'Goon' if you like lots of violence, swearing and Ice Hockey, but if you don't, I'd give this one a miss.

** / *****