Goon (Dowse, 2012)

[Fezzik]

IMDb

[Fezzik]

I was going to post in the "Upcoming Film" thread, but this apparently has been released in some places around the country (just not here).

This wasn't bad. It wasn't great either, but it was fun.

It's very bloody. The fist-fight violence is pretty brutal and they don't shy away from it.

It hits just about every beat you'd expect in a film like this, but it definitely has its charms.

Scott was well-cast here and the film has its moments, though they're almost overshadowed by Jay Baruchel. I wanted to choke the living shit out of him every time he was on screen.

Pill was cute, but Levy was wasted.

Liev Schreiber is the best thing in the film.

[Henry Gale]

Sort of on the fence about this, but overall, it's unique enough that I've been thinking about it more than I expected days after seeing it. Being Canadian but not an especially big hockey fan, having the stakes of the sport being as ultimately unimportant as they are to the movie probably helped me connect to the other more familiar sensibilities in it that stem from it just being set here (as well as written, directed by and starring almost all Canadians beyond Scott and Schreiber), just knowing enough of the sort of people and the very specific culture that the movie portrays as well as it does makes all of its otherwise noir-ish, epically violent, and emotionally heightened sequences towards the end contrast beautifully.

You can look at it as Observe & Report on ice.

[Pop Trash]

Still not very interested, but this is getting some all right reviews (surprisingly).

[Kurosawa Fan]

I wanted to like this. Sean William Scott was pretty good, the film made me laugh fairly hard on a few occasions, and I love hockey and miss the goons like Stu Grimson who made the game more fun to watch. It's just, the story is so bad. It has the quickest opening back story transitioning to main story in movie history. Baruchel is fucking intolerable. There's not enough Liev. The forced dramatic nonsense with the parents serves no purpose whatsoever. The handful of good laughs the film has can't make up for all the faults. It seems as though it was written as a collection of scenes the writers thought would be funny, and then the story was tacked on only to tie those scenes together.

[Fezzik]

I wanted to like this. Sean William Scott was pretty good, the film made me laugh fairly hard on a few occasions, and I love hockey and miss the goons like Stu Grimson who made the game more fun to watch. It's just, the story is so bad. It has the quickest opening back story transitioning to main story in movie history. Baruchel is fucking intolerable. There's not enough Liev. The forced dramatic nonsense with the parents serves no purpose whatsoever. The handful of good laughs the film has can't make up for all the faults. It seems as though it was written as a collection of scenes the writers thought would be funny, and then the story was tacked on only to tie those scenes together.

I agree with everything you said, except I liked it a little more. Baruchel wanted to make me gouge my eardrums out.

[Dukefrukem]

This made hockey look fun to watch.

[Skitch]

I cannot believe how much I enjoyed this. I had completely different expectations for what this turned out to be.

[transmogrifier]

Baruchel is fucking intolerable.

I don't think he has any other setting.

[Gizmo]

Ugh, no story, no likeable characters. I love hockey and was looking forward to this one, but I really didn't like much of anything about this. I don't even remember laughing at anything in this "comedy", and it was overly gory that I cringed more than anything. I feel like there was the making of a good story in there, but this wasn't it.

[Mr. McGibblets]

I like Seann William Scott quite a bit and I think he makes this movie watchable at least, but there's no sense of pacing at all. It just sort of putters along and hits on a few movie cliches while managing to make absolutely everything seem completely unimportant.

[Ezee E]

Liev Schreiber is in this? I shall watch.

[Rowland]

Well-made, good performances, relatively tight, funny, sweet-natured, and addresses its brutality without sermonizing, so yeah, surprisingly good.

[transmogrifier]

48/100


Seann William Scott gives an outstanding performance playing the dim-bulb lead character (no, really; he is sweet and soulful) in a film that is otherwise just dim and laugh-free. And its Baruchel Index is far, far, far too high.