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.
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