Preamble

I love underdog movies, heist movies, and movies based on a true story. I was drawn to Next Goal Wins because it's the (based on a true) story of the American Samoan soccer team, which after a series of abysmal failures is coached to competency by Dutch-American soccer star Thomas Rongen. The team hopes to redeem its national pride, and qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Awesome! The film features renowned and beloved Pacific Island actors Oscar Kightley, David Fane, and Rachel House. This film is directed by everyone's favourite zionist and Kickstarter-ghoster*, Taika Waititi. My husband - sometimes a knowing man - advised me to temper my expectations, lest the "Pasifika Cool Runnings" vibe I was hyped up on did not pan out. On that note, Cool Runnings (1993) will be my touchstone for this review, so feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it's bobsled time: Next Goal Wins!

Characters

Main character and soccer coach Thomas Rongen - played by Michael Fassbender - gets a very raw deal in the movie. Early on, he is dragged through a very tedious and unfunny scene where he gets fired (Rhys Darby, who also used to be funny, features here), and is deployed to American Samoa in disgrace, to fix the losing soccer team. It's a plot device that works well in The Mighty Ducks (1992) as well as Cool Runnings - formerly great sportsperson tries to bring a useless-yet-heartfelt team together, with mixed results.

In the film, Rongen is bitter, angry, transphobic, perpetually drunk, snooty, and trapped in the past. In real life, Rongen quickly embraced island customs and was grateful to use them as a way to move through his personal grief. He was also pivotal in accepting soccer player Jaiyah Saelua - who is fa'afafine (transgender), who had been misgendered and mistreated by previous white coaches. In the film, Rongen deliberately and aggressively misgenders Jaiyah, and doesn't blink an eye when she discloses she is skipping taking her hormones to try and improve her game. There is also a completely boring sub-plot involving Elizabeth Moss and Will Arnett, and I wish that screentime had been devoted to the Samoan characters instead. When questioned about this, Waititi simply states, “I mean, in the Bible, they took real-life things that happened and then they added, you know, magic,” he said. “I’m just like the guy who wrote the Bible, bro". He's being flip, clearly, but this is also a pretty shitty thing to do. This also feels like something that goes deeply against Māori values of tika and pono - turning a real, living person into a character and vilifying them to manufacture tension in a movie plot is not on. Besides, there are plenty of real "villains" that could be railed against - including anti-trans sporting movements, that American Samoans cannot vote in national elections, and the ongoing impacts of colonization.

As for the other characters, there is a lot of potential - and some laughs - but no one really gets much in the way of character development. This film does not impart any sense of why anyone cares about soccer at all - not Rongen, nor Tavita (the head of the soccer organization who has his heart set on the team scoring just one goal, ONE GOALLL), nor Jaiyah or any of the other players. Why do they like soccer? What do they hope to achieve? Beyond Jaiyah going to university, I can't really say.

On the other hand, the characters in Cool Runnings are also pretty cookie-cutter - but there is some character development, and more importantly we know what the stakes are when it comes to putting together a team, fundraising, qualifying, and competing as Olympians. We root for these characters because they all care deeply about the outcome, and we know why they are motivated, and what challenges them.

Humour and Tone

Taika Waititi has been directing feature-length films since 2007 (Eagle vs. Shark), and his jokes are starting to feel more than a bit tired. Some of the recycled jokes I caught in my viewing included:

• Taika casts himself as a priest, as he did in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. This cameo makes no sense and completely throws off the tone of the film
• there seems to be no reason for this other than Taika wanted to inject himself onto the big screen - The "members of a small Indigenous community juggling multiple jobs to get by" bit from Boy (2010) is repeated ad nauseum
• The "big reveal" from Rongen's past also seems copped straight from Boy
• The American Samoa vs. Tonga interactions initially reminded me of Dodgeball (2014), but my husband noted they were like the Vampires vs. Werewolves run-ins from What We Do in the Shadows (2014) - maybe it's a mix of both. On this note, it also doesn't make sense to try and bend the Tongans into villains either

Several other jokes failed to land for me - in particular, one involving a bus. For me, this is the real shame - Waititi, Kightley, House, and Fane are all fabulous, charismatic, very funny actors and writers, and the material that Waititi and Iain Morris wrote just does not give them much to work with.

Taika's other films do a wonderful job of balancing gravitas and humour, and it just doesn't seem to gel here - this film just isn't funny enough or serious enough for my taste. Some of the pacing seems really off (again, the Rhys Darby scene). The scenes around the actual soccer match also seemed paced strangely, although I think that at least in this case it was experimentation to try and disrupt the typical flow of a "based on a true story" underdog sports movie.

The last thing I'll say is that this film really centres Rongen and makes it clear that the fictionalized Rongen looks down his nose at American Samoa - his poor accommodations, the culture (in particular religion and fa'afafine), Tavita's workstation, the invites to lunch, and the people who cobble jobs together to fund his salary. It was surprising to me that only one character saw fit to knock him flat - and that his blatant drunkenness and laziness was not just tolerated among hardworking and deeply religious people, but that the soccer team repeatedly prostrated themselves and begged for his help (again, more insight into character motivation would have helped here). In Cool Runnings, the Jamaican people are proud, funny, joyful, and validate themselves. I am a sucker for underdog films and this had the makings of a hit, but ultimately, for me, it's a miss. If this film appeals to you I advise you to watch the doco Next Goal Wins (2014) and smash-hit comedy Sione's Wedding (2006).

*For transparency, I am one of several people who chipped in for Taika's 2012 kickstarter campaign, where he raised over US$100K and then did not fulfil the backer rewards or communiciate on the matter.

Score: 5/10

IMDb: Next Goal Wins

Guest Reviewer: Nicola Andrews, talented and prize-winning poet (which you can find more info about on her website, also part of the Space Cat Web Ring). She also has the best cat and the worst husband. Still.

PS: As for myself, my obvious point of personal comparison is Shaolin Soccer. One key difference though is that Shaolin Soccer has jokes that are funny, instead of just saying things in the tone of a joke and assuming the audience will probably laugh. Of course, the Stephen Chow movie is highly advantaged in being totally fictional, because it can have whatever character arcs it wants, and make up characters that are good characters, rather than being at least somewhat limited by what approximately happened in reality. He shows up for a team of misfits and succeeds by... basically kicking them off the team for better players? Inspirational! Next Goal Wins ultimately doesn't work I think because it's not actually about the team, it's about the coach, and some others just get a little development on the side, while Shaolin Soccer (and Cool Runnings) are actually about the team and its leader, with the coach just getting a little personal redemption on the side, and that dynamic actually makes a big difference.