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Mar 28, 201291Where George Roy Hill's "Slap Shot," the former reigning champ of the narrow hockey-film canon, descends into anticlimactic late-game zaniness, Goon fully commits to its theme of violence for violence's sake. It's "Paper Lion" by way of Sam Peckinpah.
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83Goon is a hoot.
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80Crude, violent and deeply enjoyable.
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78Put on your best Southie accent and say it with me: This film is wicked fahwkin' retahded and I loved it.
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75The movie is harsh, nasty and vulgar like you wouldn't believe. And often, it's hilarious.
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75The dialogue, while filthy, is wickedly funny, and sounds perfect coming out of the mouths of these beaten-down characters in their low-rent surroundings.
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75The charm of Goon is that Doug Glatt (Scott) is a genial guy from a nice family. Just because he hands out concussions doesn't mean he dislikes anybody. He's just happy to be wearing a uniform.
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Mar 31, 201270The film has weight in ways that you don't quite expect. Or maybe it's just Scott's subdued, slow-burn performance, which may have intended to convey stupidity but actually helps create an overall mood of convincing despair.
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70Scott has made an art - or at least a career - out of playing the affable dimwit. And with Goon, a salty Canadian comedy about the rise of a minor league hockey enforcer, Scott finally has his Hamlet, a role that calls for every blank, uncomprehending look in his toolbox while accessing the cuddly puppy within.
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70Seann William Scott is the best comic Neanderthal in Hollywood (American Pie, Role Models), and he's found the perfect story in this fictionalized adaptation of a memoir by minor-league hockey brawler Doug Smith.
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70When considering the moral implications of such gladiatorial violence, the film comes out squarely in favor, asking what's crueler: enjoying the spectacle of blood on ice or taking away a livelihood from those who can't do anything else?
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70One of the things making Goon so enjoyable is its fairy-tale suggestion that all humanity's violent impulses can be exorcized in a Zamboni-groomed ice rink.
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70The picture has a first-rate team of actors who visibly enjoy their roles and the sharp dialogue by Baruchel and Goldberg.
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67He can barely skate, but it hardly matters: As a goon, he's a genius.
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60Behind the film's brass knuckles are tender fingers. Why else would Goon use music from Puccini's "Turandot" to underscore critical dramatic moments?
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60Aside from Scott, only Liev Schreiber - as an aging competitor - manages to steady the frenetic swirl. Whenever the two of them are together, Goon stops skating around in circles, and matures into the funny, surprisingly touching movie it wants to be.
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60Despite being as pathetically penile-obsessed as any postmillennial comedy, Goon prevails where other sports-film farces fail thanks to Scott's winning, unwinking performance; Liev Schreiber's spot-on turn as a wizened, clock-punching rink assassin; and a pucked-up love of a bloody game.
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60Brutal, bloody and presided over by a portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, the Canadian ice hockey in this movie is a cross between Rollerball and a prison riot: harking back to the robust certainties of Paul Newman's 1977 bonecruncher "Slap Shot."
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Mar 25, 201260Lionising the pulverising, this is more fun than it has any right to be. The hockey technicalities may alienate, yet the demented, bone-crunching scraps, war-time team mentality and Whip-It style anarchy is addictive.
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50The movie's unlikely sincerity can't completely offset its ugliness for less bloodthirsty viewers, but it helps, and it does smooth over some narrative rough edges.
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50What a disappointment.
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40When a film's clichés are so obvious that its cast points them out for you, you've got to wonder how hard it's really trying.
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40Goon feels like a movie starring a gimmick, not a person.
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25A second-rate dude comedy in which an untalented knucklehead becomes a star through brute violence.