Next Goal Wins

This weekend, Next Goal Wins, the newest film from Taika Waititi, released in theaters. Next Goal Wins follows Thomas Rogen as he is sent to American Samoa to coach their infamously bad soccer team. He is tasked with getting the team to score just one goal but finds the job harder than he expected. Taika Waititi is one of my favorite directors so I was very interested to see how this movie was going to turn out.

As with pretty much all of Taika Waititi's movies, this film was a lot of fun with a good amount of heart. This film is very funny as it features Waititi's style of subtle humor and hilarious dialogue. All of the Samoa residents are very funny as they take every situation with such a light tone. The style in this movie is very silly which works quite well for the story the movie is trying to tell here. One great strength Waititi has in this movie is that he manages to balance the serious moments with the jokes without having the jokes undercut too much tension. I thought this movie also had a great amount of heart. We see some sweet interaction between Thomas and the team as well as witness some emotional moments about Thomas's backstory. I also quite enjoyed Michael Fasbender's performance as Thomas. After seeing him in The Killer last week, it was interesting to see him play a very different role here and still do a great job. He manages to portray this gruff serious coach while still throwing out some very funny moments every once in a while. The movie also does a great job of showcasing the culture of the island. We get to see how laid back everything is and how different the culture is for Thomas. I thought it was very fun to see him interact with this culture and embrace some of its aspects. Finally, I thought this movie was a classic example of an underdog story. It pretty much sticks to the underdog formula and doesn't do much new with the genre but it plays the formula well and still makes for a compelling story. It is essentially a classic underdog story with a Taika Waititi skin on it.

However, a few things are holding the movie back for me. One of the issues is the handling of the relationship between Thomas and his wife. It is established at the beginning of the film that they are separated by kind of glosses over the fact that she's dating his boss now. The movie also throws in a random sweet moment between the two towards the end of the film that really doesn't go anywhere. I think the whole relationship could have been cut and it wouldn't have changed much. The other issue I had was that most of the characters were pretty unlikable at the beginning of the movie. Thomas was a bit hard to relate to at first and the Samoa team was all so inept that it was a bit off-putting. As the story goes on you like them more but it does take a bit of time before anyone becomes likable.

Overall, this is a classic underdog story with the Taika Waititi style added on. It has some sweet and funny moments but it is still far from his best film.

Score: 7.5/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Check it out