PG-13 | 1h 43m | Comedy, Sports | November 17, 2023
In “Next Goal Wins,” New Zealand director Taika Waititi (“Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” “Thor: Ragnarok”) directs a comedy version of Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s 2014 documentary of the same name.
Is there anything more cliché in sports movies than a disgraced, down-on-his luck coach with a drinking problem who hates being forced to work with a losing team? As in, underdog team? No, there is not. At least this one is based on a true story.
I generally don’t have a problem with formulaic stories like this. Most critics insist directors reinvent the wheel every time out. There are only eight archetypal human plots that exist. Knowing the outcome is not a problem; we like knowing that movies end well; that’s why we go see them. All you have to do is tell them well; create a bit of tension and some suspense, so that they’re not anticlimactic, and the audience will willingly suspend its disbelief.
“Next Goal Wins” actually pulls this off right at the end, but it’s so little, so late, that it doesn’t make the preceding two hours of boredom feel any better. When it comes to Rotten Tomatoes reviews, I tend to side with the people instead of the critics. I gotta go with the critics on this one: critics: 42, audience: 82.
What Goes On
In 2001, after the American Samoan men’s national football team suffers a 31-0 drubbing by Australia in a qualifying match for the 2002 Federation Internationale de Football Association World Cup, they became known as the absolute worst soccer team on the planet.
In preparing for a match against Tonga in 2011 to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, the unfailingly optimistic American Samoa Football head coach (Oscar Kightley), hires American soccer coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) to whip the team into shape. Rongen’s got no other options, having just been fired. His former bosses (and his ex-wife) think this could be good for him. He’s very unhappy.
Will the American Samoans gel as a team? Will they score that one goal, which is the only thing appearing to motivate the team, and all their relatives, and the entire island?
What’s Missing
“Next Goal Wins” has much in common with 1993’s “Cool Runnings,” about the Jamaican bobsled team, but the clownish ineptness depicted in that particular movie that could ordinarily be interpreted as making fun of the natives works, because, you know—there’s no snow or bobsleds in Jamaica—the entire concept of which is so automatically knee-slap hilarious that it makes the whole movie work like a breeze.
In “Next Goal Wins,” the team’s gentle, wholesome values, played for slapstick laughs, come off as simpleton, backwoods-culture stuff. One does note, subconsciously, that despite the clowning, more than a few of the team members are dauntingly muscled and tatted. However, its only on game day, when the team unleashes quite a robust, traditional Samoan Haka dance, that we get a sense that we should have been taking them more seriously all along. So that’s a little bit fun. But, ultimately, the transcendent island-paradise setting is really the only bonus. Mostly it’s kind of a mess.
Furthermore, it’s unclear why anyone on the team likes soccer, and how and why the apparently thoroughly culturally (and romantically) clueless coach Rongen magically comes to accept certain exotic cultural details. Like, there he is, suddenly walking around wearing a skirt-wrap thingie, as well as the Ula Lole, “a Samoan necklace made of fresh foliage, flowers, shells, and sometimes fruit, which wafts a beautiful floral scent wherever one walks.” Surely this hard-bitten man must have had something close to a spiritual awakening to be wearing such a thing.
Also, the late-in-the-game dramatic reveal about coach Rongen’s tragic backstory and the source of all of his woes comes way out of left field, but it’s likely Waititi didn’t stretch the truth too much.
Actually, Fassbender nails that dramatic, locker room monologue so devastatingly, you suddenly feel you’re in a completely different movie: one where Fassbender should win an Oscar. Otherwise, his performance here is all over the place. I’d read that he’d come out of retirement for the recent “The Killer,” but “Next Goal Wins” is the type of script that’ll make most actors want to retire in the first place, so this is all a bit confusing.
The underdog story clearly cried out for its own movie, but unfortunately nearly all of the film’s heartfelt moments feel unearned. It also, on paper, would seem to be tailor-made for Waititi’s skill set, but “Next Goal Wins” is a swing and a miss. Or the soccer equivalent of that. Actually, this soccer non-fan feels that “a swing and a miss” is pretty much what the entire game of soccer is about, but one would have liked to exit “Next Goal Wins” shouting “Gooooaaaallllll!!!” Or at least muttering it. But alas, no.
‘Next Goal Wins’
Director: Taika Waititi
Starring: Michael Fassbender
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Release Date: Nov. 17, 2023
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
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