Next Goal Wins (4 Stars)

I don't often watch sports films, especially not in the cinema. "Next Goal Wins" is an exception for one reason: it was directed by Taika Waititi. I can trust his films to be first class comedies. His films are even funny when they shouldn't be funny, such as "Thor Love and Thunder". Marvel films would be better without humour, but hiring Taika as director made it obvious the film would be a comedy.

Can a true story be a comedy? Yes, as "Next Goal Wins" proves. After losing 31:0 to Australia, the national team of American Samoa was considered to be the world's worst football team. A standing joke in the film is that the Football Federation of American Samoa is abbreviated to FFAS, which is pronounced "farce". They're determined to qualify for the 2014 World Cup, so they hire an American football coach, a Dutchman who's been fired from his previous coaching jobs for constantly losing his temper. They soon have to lower their aims, and they say that they'll be happy if they score at least one goal in the qualifying rounds.

A lot of the film's humour concerns the coach's arrival on a small island. Everyone knows him. The population is only 47,000. There's no reception for his mobile phone, so he's forced to use a landline. Another comic element is the fact that the team's captain is transgender. He/she is technically still classed as male, but he's undergoing hormone treatment to become fully female. The trouble is that when he becomes too female, he'll no longer be eligible to play in a men's team.

The film has had mixed reception from critics, but I like it. It starts slowly, but it becomes funnier and funnier as it continues.