High and Outside
Let’s put it this way: MichAEL FASSBENDER IS A TREMENDOUS DRAMATIC ACTOR…
Next Goal Wins
Director: Taika Waititi • Writers: Taika Waititi, Iain Morris, based on the documentary by Mike Brett, Steve Jamison
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, Kaimana, David Fane, Beulah Koale, Uli Latukefu
USA • 1hr 43mins
Opens Hong Kong January 11 • IIA
Grade: C-
It really, really pains me to say it about two of my favourites, but here goes nothin’: Michael Fassbender is about as funny as colon cancer, and Taika Waititi needs to take a fuckin’ break and slow down so his creative battery has time to recharge. Because based on Next Goal Wins, a comedy-drama about the woeful American Samoan football team that pulled itself back from the brink of oblivion with help from a cranky Dutch coach, Fassbender needs to stick to drama – hey, he may be a laff-riot at a party but onscreen he flops hard – and Waititi is obviously spread way too thin for his singular voice to sound like it. Right now, new or relatively new Waititi-headed programming includes What We Do in the Shadows, Our Flag Means Death, Reservation Dogs, The Mountain, Interior Chinatown, and a Star Wars film. As a start. Sure some of those titles are in the can or are ending, some are in early stages, but it just feels like Waititi is all over the place; he’s Jennifer Lawenceing. The wear and tear started to show in Thor: Love and Thunder and Next Goal Wins oozes “contractual committment” in every frame.
The film’s problems are not the conventions of the underdog sports comedy; Jon Turteltaub mined genuine, feel-good humour from a Jamaican bobsled crew in Cool Runnings. Nor are they in the amazing story of the first transgender person playing in a FIFA-sanctioned football match and letting Samoans show the rest of us how gender can be done. The film’s problems are that it’s as lazy and half-assed as it gets. There’s a fun family film in here somewhere, it’s just no one bothered to get it.
This film’s outline
Lest we leave the impression that the whole thing is a dumpster fire, it should be made clear that Fassbender isn’t so bad as he is miscast. Again… not funny, and as short-fused, ultra-intense football coach Thomas Rongen, Waititi and co-writer Iain Morris only hint at a tragic backstory they later rush through in about 15 minutes in Act III. On a similar note, the seeming connection he makes with faʻafafine – Samoa’s traditional third gender – player Jaiyah Saelua (first timer Kaimana) is glossed over, giving him no dramatic material to run with. For most of the film Rongen just comes off as a selfish, self-important snob who it’s hard to care about. And the dismissive way the script treats Jaiyah reduces her almost to the status of houseplant, whose only job is to set the main man straight. At one point Jaiyah reveals she’s gone off her hormones in order to play better for the team. She’s distraught. Confused. Out of sorts and states she “doesn’t feel like” herself. That’s all we get about her and that specific struggle. Waititi and Morris unfairly cut her off at the knees.
Which is not to say Kaimana isn’t a natural, or that the rest of the cast isn’t making the most of their clichéd character arcs. As the multi-hyphenate manager/operator/cameraman/tour guide/restaurateur Tavita, Oscar Kightley easily wins the likeabilty sweepstakes. He knows what the movie should be and he brings a dignified edge to the kooky islander archetype. Ditto for David Fane as Ace, the team’s ineffectual but sweet-natured coach before Rongen.
Next Goal Wins has enough goofy pratfalls and inept training montages to keep littler kids amused; there were plenty of youthful chuckles from the preview audience. It has an air of significance for Jaiyah’s participation and Adam Sandler-style good time vibes. You know the kind. Like when George Clooney and Brad Pitt decided to take a vacation with friends and make Ocean’s Eleven. Waititi called in favours from the cast of Our Flag (Rachel House, Rhys Darby), old MCU mates (Luke Hemsworth) and his new Hollywood pals (Kaitlyn Dever, Elisabeth Moss, Will Arnett) for small parts as FIFA brass and they all went to Hawaii for a working holiday. And as has become trendy lately, we get a Samoan haka to cap it off, which is always mesmerising. But it all falls flat, mostly because that central, crucial bittersweet comic performance is absent. Rongen’s redemption feels empty because we don’t care about/like him enough, and the team’s modest triumph feels hollow because we’ve barely gotten to know them. When the “world’s worst goalkeeper” Nicky Salapu (Uli Latukefu) steps in front of the net for a decisive penalty kick from Tonga, there’s an inkling of stakes, but Salapu’s such non-entity unitl then it barely registers. Watch Cool Runnings instead. Better still, check out the superior doc. — DEK