So, what happened to Taikia Waititi? I don’t mean what happened to him personally. He seems to be doing fine. I’m wondering what the heck happened that the guy who wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated Jojo Rabbit plus one of the most acclaimed of the MCU’s various movies, namely Thor: Ragnarok now has his latest, Next Goal Wins essentially a movie the studio released to small crowds and middling reviews. It came out to my neck of the woods last weekend, and I saw it on Black Friday in a screening room that seats maybe three dozen at most and with only one other person. Was Thor: Love and Thunder that much of a career killer?

I mean, I actually rather liked Love and Thunder when I saw it…

Based on a true story, the opening scenes relates how the American Samoa football team lost 31-0 in a World Cup qualifying match to Australia. Since then, the team has not only failed to win a game, they haven’t even been able to score so much as a single goal against their opponents. To emphasize how bad it is, the team can’t even pull off the traditional haka dance in anything like rhythm in front of an opposing team. Enter recently fired soccer coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender). Sent to coach the team from the United States, he’s known for his temper and seems to be a heavy drinker. He doesn’t quite get the place at first, especially the perennially cheerful team president Tavita (Oscar Kightley), a man whose one goal is for the team to score a goal and have fun more than anything else.

Rongen soon finds the team to be mostly pathetic. Tavita works multiple jobs to keep the team running, and Rongen’s predecessor as head coach is sleeping on Tavita’s couch while his son Daru (Beulah Koale) plays for the team. The goalie is an overweight fellow who can barely run. And then there’s Jaiyah (Kaimana), a trans woman who still qualifies for the men’s team because she hasn’t had the surgery yet, and she and Rongen clash early on. Rongen doesn’t get American Samoa culture, and it’s debatable if he even wants to. His philosophy on soccer might work if he can bother to teach it to the players. But there’s a reason for his distance, and the team’s goal is a modest one: can they get a ball in the goal during a game?

OK, honestly, I have no idea why this movie isn’t doing better. My best guess is it is more a lowkey sort of comedy, closer to Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (where Waititi also appeared as an awkward man of the cloth) than anything else. This isn’t the sort of movie that deals with a really big sort of thing like the last days of Hitler’s Germany or anything involving a Norse Thunder God. It’s just about a coach learning how to be something like a human being again, someone who coaches football because he enjoys the game not because he wants to dominate the sport or something. Yes, I can safely say I saw the coach’s big personal issue coming long before he revealed it, but the movie is spiked through with silly physical comedy and nice character moments, not the least which how Tavita and his wife (frequent Waititi collaborator Rachel House) use their knowledge of how little white people know about their culture to pass along pretend island wisdom, something that always seems to work.

And honestly, Waititi finds some interesting ways to spun the standard sports story here. Waititi frames the third act big match in a really creative way, one that allows for some laughs while also creating some genuine tension over who would win or lose the game. There was a part of me that was even expecting a fake-out given the delivery. Why isn’t this movie doing better? I wouldn’t call it the writer/director’s best, but it’s a fun and amusing little movie. We can’t expect all of his work to be about a kid’s imaginary friend version of Hitler.

Grade: B


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