The latest batch of reactions and brief reviews of films throughout the rest of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Next Goal Wins (2023 | USA | 103 minutes | Taika Waititi)
The long-delayed production was one of the splashiest announcements on the TIFF lineup and as a true underdog sports story held the promise of being a big crowd-pleaser for a festival that prizes its audience above all else. Sure, this story of a disgraced soccer coach exiled to help turn around the hapless American Samoa national soccer team has some cute moments and chuckles, but it falls flat over and over again.
Waititi puts himself into the movie as a goofy priest / narrator figure. Michael Fassbender is so miscast as the ornery coach that I spent most of the movie assuming he’d been spliced in after principal filming to replace Armie Hammer in the wake of his scandals. That role, a US Soccer executive, actually went to Will Arnett, but as reconstructed he and Elisabeth Moss have so little to do and are so extraneous to the plot that they might have been better excised entirely. With almost every character played for comic relief (mostly with cheap jokes about their simpleton natures), there’s no one to invest in. Kaimana (a fa’afafine or non-binary person) brings welcome dimensionality to represent Jaiyah Saelua, the first non-binary player to compete in a men’s FIFA World Cup qualifier, but is still stuck in a jokey script that doesn’t quite know how to handle this groundbreaking character and instead clumsily centers their dramatic arc around a coach’s journey to acceptance.
By the big, emotionally manipulative finale, the reaction in the theater suggested that the film worked for at least some of the audience, but I remained baffled. After a series of misfires, it may be time to concede that I have irreconcilably different sensibilities and interests from Taika Waititi. Watching this in a crowd of believers made me feel like I was from another planet.
Next Goal Wins had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Other reviews from today at Tornoto
Richard Linklater serves up a very tasty slice of an incredibly loopy premise. Glen Powell gobbles it up and makes it work through the power of pure, unrelenting, leading man handsomeness. Nothing wrong with pairing a director who knows how to have a good time with an actor who’s ascending to movie star supernova. Here the daffy vaguely-true story meshes with an intensely charming performance into a delightful gumbo.
Alexander Payne’s latest leans hard into 1970s nostalgia with a memory piece set at a New England boarding school. Working from a script by David Hemingson, the story is set during a chilly break when most residents have gone home for the holidays, three lonely souls find themselves abandoned on the drafty campus, each too prickly to have a clue how to keep each other warm.
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the film being covered here wouldn’t exist. More information about the strikes can be found on the SAG-AFTRA Strike hubs. Donations to support striking workers can be made at the Entertainment Community Fund.