'Goat' is proof the sports movie formula almost always works

If my packed Valentine's Day screening was any indication, Goat is already an extreme success among its intended audience – namely, children who haven't had an animated theatrical movie to watch since Zootopia 2 released over Thanksgiving weekend. (Well, secular animated movie, anyway; the Biblical film David overshot its projections pretty well in December.) Goat featured the most applause breaks I've heard in a movie theater since Avengers: Endgame. (Including a strange applause break for the Sony logo before the opening credits, which led me to assume one of two things: either a Sony employee was there with his family and friends and their kids, or K-Pop Demon Hunters and the Spider-Verse films have already struck such a chord with kids that their logo evokes the same feeling of "I'm about to watch a quality film" that the golden age of Pixar did.)

Goat is being given a half-and-half advertising treatment beyond the standard "family animated film" campaign: they're doing a "from the studio that brought you" playing off of Demon Hunters and Spider-Verse, and "this is the Stephen Curry talking animal movie," with executive producer Curry appearing in ads and suggesting the movie is loosely based on his life. Curry's influence and inspiration in the movie is hard to ignore: the lead character, Will, is an undersized shooter sporting the occasional curls you'll see Curry rocking midseason, and it seems like a lot of work was put into capturing Curry's moves and circus shots ... Will even chews on a clear mouthguard between plays just like the Chef. The movie is (more or less) about a "small" who comes to the sport of roarball and changes the game. (The predominant athletes in the league are gorillas, bears, stallions, alligators, jungle cats, elephants ... you get the picture.) It's impossible to ignore the echoes of the greatest shooter of all time. Another hilarious inclusion: Curry's longstanding partnership with Under Armour is all over this movie – strangely, just as the deal is coming to a close in real life. While it's weird to see a basketball movie (especially an animated one) where every character is wearing UA kicks, Under Armour is the one company whose logo's inclusion on the league's jerseys just makes them feel more like a real thing. I guess the capitalist brainwashing worked on me!

The most surprising part of Curry's involvement in the movie is that he plays one of the supporting characters in the movie and one of the starting five on the main character's team. I say it's "surprising," because I knew Curry was a voice in the movie, but never even guessed he was the one voicing his character. While I couldn't place the voice, I figured (as is typical in a movie like this) that the voice was performed by Stock Network Sitcom Star D, which is basically the highest compliment I can give a professional athlete voice-acting performance. (Ayesha Tyler, who plays a much smaller role in the film, is a bit less natural, but never jarring.)

Anyway, on to the film. The opening, say, 15 minutes is a bit of a jumble and occasionally a bit of a mess as they rush to cram in a lot of world-building, but the scramble is a little necessary. Although it's all fairly standard, this is still for kids, and you have to set up:

• this is a world of talking animals
• there's a heirarchy in the world of talking animals (at least where sports is concerned)
• the backstory of the main character
• the talent of the main character
• the rules of this world's version of basketball
• the main character's friends, family, and immediate antagonists
• the OTHER main character's backstory and current situation/mindset
• the evil team owner angling to make moves

That's a lot! Luckily, that opening act never spirals too fully out of control, and even more luckily, once Will makes it onto the team, the movie shifts 100 percent into Sports Movie Formula, and it's a formula for a very good reason: if you do an even somewhat adequate job, it will work. And the majority of Goat works very, very well.

The central conflict of Goat is that the star player, Will's hero, Jett Fillmore (voiced by Gabrielle Union, as the movie makes a lowkey brilliant decision making roarball a unisex sport, since these are animals, after all), is an all-time great who has never one the big one and has settled into the role of hogging the ball and the spotlight, bossing her teammates around, acting as de facto coach, and being haunted by her legacy of choking even as her body has begun breaking down. She's not about to give up her playing time for some "small," right?

The two things that the movie gets stunningly right (for a movie for kids) are the complicated relationship between athletes and their fans, and how a city or region's identity can get completely caught up in the success or failure of their local team. The second bit gets a bunch of play down the home stretch, as the evil team owner's plans for the future of the team come into focus. Goat hit extra hard for me when it got all the sports stuff right. It even has a local diner regular being a performative hater after having been burned by the team too many times.

The roarball sequences are a blast, and as exhilarating as you want a game in a sports movie to be. There are a lot of good jokes and some definite clunkers, but this perfectly average kids animated movie punches so far above its weight by getting all of the sports stuff right. Way to go, Steph Curry et al. You didn't do a bad job!