After the glorious goofiness of Thor Ragnarok and the TV adaption of What We Do in the Shadows, Love and Thunder came as a disappointment. Some of Taika Waititi irreverent spirit was in there, but the whole product just didn’t come together, with characters that were hard to find a character to root for and a cancer subplot that just didn’t gel.
It’s a bit of relief, then, that Waititi goes for more straightforward feel-good fare with Next Goal Wins, the story of down-on-his-luck coach Thomas Rongen, who is given the choice to retire or lead the American Samoa football team, one of the worst football teams in the world, to the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifying stage. Funnily enough, he takes the latter option, and hijinks ensue. Waititi’s comic fourth-wall intro lets us know that the narrative isn’t going to stray too far from the director’s usual style, or the stereotypical sports mockumentary schtick, but that’s not to say that the film doesn’t have heart. Waititi keeps a tight focus on the conflict between Rongen and football player Jaiyah Saelua , the first transgender player to compete in World Cup qualifiers, throughout, and sprinkles footage of the real-life American Samoa team in action, even though he acknowledges from the off that certain aspects of the film are more true to fact than others. It’s doubtful, for example, that Rongen delivered a Taken-esque speech to his team, or that frequent Matrix references were made by the team, or that Rongen watched and quoted lines from Any Given Sunday to motivate his team. But I’ll let those embellishments slide.
At the end of the day, Next Goal Wins isn’t going to move mountains with its low-stakes drama and conventional surface level narrative, but if you’re looking for a distraction with those post-Christmas blues still hanging over you, then Waititi’s latest ain’t too bad.