Goon (2012)

hyped garbage

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The first must-see film of the year.

'Goon' is a unoriginal one-joke comedy with an generic and boring plot that has already been done dozens of times before. It reminded me of a bad ice-hockey version of the movie 'Dodgeball'. But while that movie had some hilarious characters and very funny one- liners, 'Goon' relies on the same cheap and unfunny gag for most of its attempted humour.The main character is stupid and clumsy, but in an annoying way rather than funny. After the first two or three scenes of him destroying everything in his path, it starts to get a little tiresome. That's the film's only joke, and it isn't very funny or durable. 'Goon' is an annoying and totally unfunny movie, lacking any originality or ideas to make it worth your time.

Meet Doug Glatt, the immortal legend of dude-ness, an independent weapon enlisted by a hockey club to enforce their ice with buckets of blood. Disguised as a mens meeting movie, until a cute love bunny becomes his greatest fan and drives this classic comedy into the thigh hole.

Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott) is a bar bouncer and an embarrassment to his doctor father (Eugene Levy). His best friend Pat (Jay Baruchel) has an online chat show Hot Ice covering hockey action. Their favorite player Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber) gets suspended. They go to a minor league game where one player comes at Pat in the stands. Doug ends up pummeling the player and becomes a sensation. He can barely skate but he still gets on the team Orangetown Assassins as a goon. He gets hired by the Halifax Highlanders to protect their valuable prospect.This has healthy doses of the classic hockey movie 'Slap Shot'. The trick of this one seems to be making Seann William Scott the straight man. Everybody else is crazy wacky. Baruchel is hilarious and the team is ridiculous fun. There are some big giant laughs in this. The story could be stabilized more by keeping Doug being on one team and having him stay at home. That way his family and Baruchel could have bigger parts in the movie.

I'd really give this a 6.5 but no half stars allowed. If you're hoping for Seann William Scott to be Steve Stiffler playing hockey then you might be disappointed. Scott's character is an unintelligent, dull but a well meaning and loyal guy. While a lot of this movie is a comedy Scott plays the character straight. There is no "wink" to the audience at all. There is a sweetness to him that makes you pull for him. Liev Schreiber is the "bad guy" who is never really that, in fact you can kind if like him too if he wasn't punching people all the time. Almost wish he had more screen time. It's not quite Slap Shot but still worth a look.