You’d expect an animated basketball film with four-time NBA champion Stephen Curry in the producer’s chair to be an easy lay-up. So why is GOAT an air ball?
Despite a wondrously textured, kinetic world and some interesting oddball characters, the movie is undone by a predictable script.
It centres on Will Harris, a goat with dreams of becoming a great baller, voiced by Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin. Undersized and an orphan, Will is a delivery driver for a diner, and he is late on his rent. He is a great outside shooter but a liability in the paint – the area on the court under each basket.
He lives in Vineland – a hectic urban landscape with graffiti and living vines that choke the playgrounds – and supports the local franchise, the Thorns. His idol is veteran Jett Fillmore, a leopard who is the league’s all-time leading scorer, nicely voiced by Gabrielle Union. The Thorns are a bit of a mess, despite Jett’s brilliance.
The game here is called “roarball”, a high-intensity, coed, multi-animal, full-contact sport derived from basketball with a hollow ball that has small holes. The sport is ultraviolent and unregulated, and the dangers lurk not just from the beefy opponents but from the arena itself. The championship award is called the Claw.
The best part of the film may be the environments for the other arenas: lava in one, a swamp with stalagmites and stalactites in another, plus an icebound one and another with desert sandstorms and rocks. Homefield advantage is a big thing in this league.
This universe is divided into “bigs” and “smalls” – rhinos, bears and giraffes on one side, gerbils and capybara on the other – and Will is deemed a small. “Smalls can’t ball,” he is told, condescendingly.
But thanks to a viral video, Will improbably gets signed to the Thorns by the team’s owner, a cynical warthog voiced wonderfully by Jenifer Lewis. It is seen as a shameless publicity stunt that no one wants, especially Jett, who needs a winning season after being taunted by “All stats, no Claw.”
Now, predictably, comes the bulk of the story, giving a steady The Karate Kid plotline as it charts Will’s steady rise to honoured teammate and franchise future, despite Jett insisting she is not ready to go: “I’m the GOAT. I’m not passing the torch.”
The lessons about the importance of teamwork and believing in yourself are good, but the violence on the courts is extreme. There are also hollow slogans like “Dream big” and “Roots run deep.”
Some of the most interesting characters end up on the Thorns, a fragile, somewhat broken team that includes a rhino (voiced by David Harbour), a delicate ostrich (Nicola Coughlan), a gonzo Komodo dragon (Nick Kroll) and a desultory giraffe (Curry).
The Komodo dragon, named Modo, is the best of the bunch, an unpredictable creature full of electricity.
“If Modo was any more of a snack, he’d eat himself,” he declares. Could he get his own film?
Directed by Bob’s Burgers veteran Tyree Dillihay and Adam Rosette, GOAT is targeted at Gen Alpha, leveraging cellphone screens and online likes, virality and diss tracks. It is not as funny as it thinks it is and feels tiresome in its overly familiar redemption arc.
