GOAT
Familiar but stylish animated sports entertainment.
GOAT is the furry heir to several familiar sports movie storylines. Will Harris, a goat, longs to play “roarball” with the pros. When he gets an unlikely chance as the league’s first small animal player he must prove himself to a skeptical team. Also, the team is dysfunctional and to become champions must learn to work as unit. On top of that, Will clashes with the team’s veteran star player, who feels her legacy may be threatened by the arrival of new talent. No one can accuse GOAT of hiding its many narrative influences. Fortunately this animated sports tale excels in a few ways that make up for its less than original story.
For one thing, GOAT is pretty funny. As you’d expect the film features tons of animal-based humor that elicited giggles from a screening packed with children and chuckles from their parents. Over the top explosive character reactions left them in titters. And there’s a joyful absurdity in the film’s distinctly modern trappings. Where else can you see a jacked stallion drop a diss track? While the cast of characters is a tad overcrowded there are some clear comic standouts, most notably a deliciously weird reptilian roarballer voiced by Nick Kroll called Modo, whose comic potential is so well realized his mere movements make for solid sight gags. If you’re going to see a film with a story that’s amalgamated from a half dozen others, you could do much worse than one that’ll entertain.
Curiously, while the story’s broad strokes are nothing new, the narrative lens of GOAT manages to capture a strangely sentimental authenticity in its depiction of the role sports can have in building community identity. At the expense of establishing its wider world, the film spends most of its non-stadium time in just a few Vineland city blocks where the local roarball team is a shared source of pride and where the steady sound of play on the court is like a cultural heartbeat.
By now it’s easy to expect excellence in animation and art direction from Sony Pictures Animation and GOAT is indeed another feather in their cap. GOAT looks terrific and brings new flourishes to the pioneering style originally developed for the Spider-Verse films. Dynamic impact frames are accented with glimpses of foil trim and iridescent effects akin to those used on sports trading cards. The roarball sequences are high energy action set pieces in which the camera zips through hazardous, erupting stadiums and bounds with the ball after each crunchy character contact. In less kinetic scenes, lovely painterly backgrounds sometimes approach abstraction. The environmental art direction is superb; Vineland blends familiar inner city fixtures with jungle incursion. Vegetation overhangs everything, thick tree roots ripple along walls and streets.
In addition to the aforementioned Kroll, GOAT boasts the voice talents of a Jennifer Lewis, David Hayter, Stephen Curry, Patton Oswalt, Aaron Pierre (Mufasa in Disney’s Lion King prequel), and Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlin. Will is played admirably by Stranger Things alum Caleb McLaughlin, who balances the brash youthful confidence and tender kindness the character requires. But in many ways Will’s hero turned team antagonist Jett Fillmore, played by Gabrielle Union, is the heart of the film. Jett, plagued with doubts about her legacy and isolated from the team as a result, is the character with the strongest arc and most interesting set up. Exciting final game aside, I wish that the character resolutions were a little harder earned. Yes, I know, it’s a children’s film. Even so, the various set ups feels a tad underserved by single scene turnabouts and off-screen interventions.
Ultimately, a pretty minor quibble. Despite the overly familiar story beats, GOAT is an entertaining and goodhearted sports adventure that kids will love and grownups should find easy to enjoy, making this an easy recommendation for a family trip to the cinema.
