GOAT

Grade: D+

GOAT is loud, colorful, garish, and it didn’t take long until I’d had just about enough of it. Its biggest problem is it doesn’t breathe. There are no peaks and valleys. It’s constantly on to the next thing, non-stop. Imagine if Baz Luhrmann directed a Spider-Verse movie. Tonally, I’d also liken it to Piece by Piece, the Pharrell Williams biopic that was done LEGO style.

It’s set in a Zootopia-like melting pot community called Vineland, made up of anthropomorphic animals. Caleb McLaughlin provides the voice of our protagonist – Will Harris, a goat. He has aspirations of becoming a professional roarball player. Roarball is basically basketball with a basketball-sized wiffle ball with holes in it. 

When his performance at a local court game goes viral, it catches the eye of the owner of the Vineland Thorns, a team that hasn’t been having the best season, much less the best past decade. They sign Will on, as a publicity stunt, to drum up attention for their fading team by flaunting the new blood. Will doesn’t get much court time at first, being relegated to glorified water boy, but he’s just happy to be on board, and to be working with his childhood idol, a black panther named Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union). Once the hottest rising star in all of roarball, she is now just a hothead. Collaboration with teammates isn’t her strong suit, and she’s quick to hog all the credit whenever something does go well. The voice talent is stacked (it also includes the likes of Jennifer Hudson, Nick Kroll, and Wayne Knight), but this is a generic affair without a single interesting plot line or character arc for me to latch onto.

I enjoyed a motif where every roarball venue has a different theme. None of them are the same. They are at an ice palace, another one has a hellfire thing going on, and another has a cave theme, with stalactites that may fall at any moment. Otherwise, I was between apathy and boredom for all of 100 of GOAT’s frenetic, chaotic, jittery minutes. I was very amused by a quick fart gag that is teased in the trailer. I laughed very hard whenever it came up, in the months leading up to this release, no pun intended. Seeing it in the movie, with all the context attached to it, somehow made it less funny.

Grade: D+