I assume every Canadian knows the age-old joke by now: "I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out." I, myself, am not a fan of hockey, so I guess it's my own fault for going into movie thinking I'd like it, but I'll admit a Canadian film with Scott and Schreiber in it had me sold. I even paid the extra $8 to experience the most nauseating D-Box experience of my life. Ouch.
Goon is supposedly based on a true story of a fighter who was trained to skate and be a hockey player, and was famous for sucking at hockey but beating the snot out of his opponents. Except, just replace the word "fighter" with "bouncer", and you have the 95 minute exercise in idiocy that is Goon, a comedy so depressingly boring. it's essentially Moneyball with tons of blood and gore, and without the classy charm.
The first 20 minutes of the movie were gloriously entertaining. The opening fight scene on ice and the bloody tooth falling on the ice. That was brilliant. When we're introduced to the Main character is where the film starts getting slightly weak, however. So, you're telling me this guy is all adorkable and awkward, yet he has no problem beating people to a bloody pulp? Well, even then I was enjoying the film.
However, when we meet his love interest, the film falls flat on his face. People considered the relationship between the hobo and the hooker in Hobo With A Shotgun to be unbelievable, but this makes it look like a tabloid story. In fact, the love aspect reminded me of Twilight at times (take a wild guess as to whether or not that's a compliment). Then we get clichéd "gets the girl" ending? Frack right off. I've dropped turds more believable than that.
Ultimately, the protagonist is just boring. He's given very few funny lines to work with, he has little to no personality whatsoever, and we're supposed to love him based on mere fighting skills alone. The most interesting character, Liev Schreiber's is only in it for five minutes. And the fight at the end isn't even redeeming at all either.
But the worst problem with the film? It's BORING. the first 20 minutes are the funniest (not a good sign), the villain is interesting yet boring, the film doesn't use fight content to its full potential, there's no restraint at all whatsoever in the film... It's all just one big mess.
If you like being beat over the head with BS, I guess see Goon, but for the rest of us, Goon is a disposable comedy to stock video store shelves with, and a huge disappointment considering the potential it all had.
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