Blood is on the ice within seconds in Goon, an absolutely brutal, painfully predictable comedy about a hockey bruiser with a heart of gold.
Seann William Scott plays the dim-witted Doug Glatt, a bouncer and simpleton who finds his calling as a hired thug on a Canadian minor league hockey team called the Halifax Highlanders. Doug can't skate, but he can take and deliver a punch better than anyone else, so he watches out for his teammates — usually from the penalty box. (Naturally, Doug wears the number 69, a sexual reference that is still hi-larious in 2012.)
Doug is a surprisingly sweet guy, more Rocky Balboa than Homer Simpson, but he's so thick-headed that his Neanderthal bits are more pathetic than funny, despite other characters openly laughing in his face when he tells a dopey story. His inability to form sentences makes for some cringe-inducing dialogue as part of his romantic subplot, though Alison Pill's dramatic line readings aren't any easier to hear. "You… you make me want to stop sleeping with a bunch of guys," she blurts from under Zooey Deschanel's haircut. Of course, Doug responds, "That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
It's difficult to tell what's supposed to be funny as it thuds out of a half-baked script by co-star Jay Baruchel and screenwriter Evan Goldberg (co-writer of Pineapple Express and The Green Hornet with Seth Rogen). On screen, Baruchel rocks a punk rock Mohawk as Ryan, the host of a hockey fan-cast who describes a gushing wound as a "face period." Ryan sounds like a Kevin Smith character, immediately ramping into fast-talking fellatio gags and the heavily-accented attitude of early Ben Affleck. (Maybe it's the proximity to R-rated hockey and Smith's own upcoming sports comedy, Hit Somebody, which originally had Scott slated to star.) Regardless, Baruchel's sporadic, askew appearances just feel out of place, even if this too-serious sports movie could use more jolts of comedic energy.
To his credit, director Michael Dowse understands the finesse and bone-crunching brutality of the sport and shoots more on-ice action than most hockey flicks (save Slap Shot). In the minors, the refs still let them fight, and when two goons square off at center ice to the roar of the crowd, it briefly feels like a medieval arena where men spill blood and teeth for their side. Doug is the champion who earns the thumbs up from the cheap seats, and, if he plays well with others, maybe a Happy Meal toy that will entertain him for days.
The rest of the movie is a bloody mess, an amalgam of influences ranging from Rocky to Adam Sandler's skate-wielding Happy Gilmore to the ho-hum team dynamics of Major League III. A teammate with a porn 'stache who never speaks again says, "Two rules: stay away from my Percocet, and do you have any Percocet?" It's all over the place tonally too, featuring intense scenes with the amped-up coach (Kim Coates), a flashy forward (Marc-Andre Grondin), and legendary enforcer Ross Rhea (Liev Schrieber), followed by more dopey shenanigans and graphic violence. Rock-bottom for Goon is a sentimental down note where Doug's father (Eugene Levy) vehemently disapproves of his life, followed by a spitting match involving the three leads and yet another fight… while the minor league playoffs hang in the balance.
source from: newsinfilm
