Goon (**3/4)

It’s an odd thing that “based on a true story” at the start of the film almost always means “based on a true story, but exaggerated.” Of course, what I know about minor-league hockey could fit into a haiku. Still, the first 20 minutes of this movie might make you think that the players never did anything but fight, curse, and talk smack. The role of “enforcer” is real enough, though, and apparently Doug Smith, the subject of Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey, really was a guy who liked to fight and never put on skates until he was 19.

Seann Williams, looking a lot burlier than in the American Pie movies, plays Smith’s fictional (and Jewish) alter ego, called Doug Glatt. Glatt, like the tin man, has no brains, a good heart, and a solid body. If you like watching dudes get punched, this is your movie.  It gives some of the feel of what it’s like to criss-cross eastern Canada on buses with holes to pee in. It features Eugene Levy, the dad in the American Pie movies (including the simultaneously released American Reunion), as Doug’s dad, who can’t quite figure out how a middle-class Jewish couple wound up with a dumb jock for a son. And Liev Schreiber, surprisingly convincing as a veteran enforcer and role model for Doug. It’s kind of comical, too. When Doug sees the girl he likes (Alison Pill) crying, he asks, “Did you just watch Rudy?,” displaying both his sensitivity and his limited worldview.

This is very much a limited movie, too. The production values are a bit minor league. It offers no moral perspective on the brutality and leaves out the surgeries and other details of physical damage that featured in the book. Doug’s teammates remain one-dimensional. But, like Doug, the movie’s kind of likeable after you get to know it.

IMDb link

viewed 4/5/12 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/5/12