And now we can finally put the pandemic to bed. Close to four years after it started shooting, Taika Waititi’s alleged soccer comedy comes limping pathetically into largely uninterested cinemas. A lot has happened since then. There was that global outbreak. Armie Hamer, originally cast in a supporting role, was accused of sexual abuse and was replaced by Will Arnett. The eerily similar Ted Lasso launched on Apple. Meanwhile (not entirely fairly), the world fell a little out of love with Waititi.
The ramshackle, borderline offensive farrago that Next Goal Wins has become seems unlikely to refurbish the New Zealander’s reputation. The bewilderingly miscast Michael Fassbender – honestly, you may as well ask Natalie Portman to play Churchill – turns up as a boozy, failed coach dispatched to revivify the crumbling American Samoa squad. Based on an acclaimed documentary, the film looks to be asking us to fill in the many gaps in its Swiss-cheese narrative. Because we’ve seen sports films before, we presume that the manager and the team are here to heal each other. You know how it goes. He helps them gain confidence on the pitch. They help him overcome some initially unexpressed trauma and beat his addiction to the booze. Not much of this actually happens onscreen. But we take it as read.
There are essentially just two characters in the film. One is Fassbender’s sour, sozzled Thomas Rongen. Dutch in real life, but here generically “European”, he spends the film bawling at every passerby with a naked aggression that belongs in a much meaner film. The other is the collective mass of cutesy, infantile quirk that is the entire island population. A few characters almost stand out. Kaimana makes an effort as Jaiyah Saelua, the first trans woman to compete in a World Cup qualifier, but even she can’t escape the rising morass of cheap stereotypes. Everyone is a simple-minded charmer. Everyone has a funny story to tell. Nobody seems properly connected to the modern world. Ring any bells? It is for Samoans to decide how they feel about this, but, watching on this island, it is impossible not to think of high Paddywhackery such as Wild Mountain Thyme. And it took four years to get this thing into cinemas? Faith and begorrah (or the Southern Pacific equivalent)!
Next Goal Wins is in cinemas from St Stephen’s Day
