Entertaining Homage to Hockey Goons

Rating: 7/10 (18 February 2015)

For those of you looking for a high-class, well-nuanced dramatic presentation, Goon is probably not for you. However, it is very funny and has a lot of heart in unexpected places, so is well worth a view for someone who likes sports movies and (extremely) vulgar comedy.
The story revolves around Doug, a bouncer at an Ontario bar who one day beats up a hockey player at a minor league game who crawls into the stands to take out a fan. The performance is noticed by the home hockey coach, who invites him to a tryout. Doug can't even skate, but he is the toughest son-of-a-gun on the planet and is soon hired by the team to take out enemy goons. The movie traces Doug's remarkable and extremely tacky career as a hockey enforcer, up to a showdown with a famous bully from a rival team.
This movie inevitably draws comparisons to Slap Shot, to which it is clearly indebted, but actually has a different slant than its predecessor. Slap Shot was an homage to teams like the 70s Flyers, who played a new rough and tumble style but whose players were still hockey players. Goon, by contrast, pays homage to a phenomenon of the 80s and 90s, single players hired by teams specifically to fight and do little else. Guys like Bob Probert, Chris Nilan, Derek Boogarde and others could barely play hockey, but made a very tough living being the body-guards of the skill players. Doug from Goon clearly plays that role.
The movie gets a lot of comedic mileage out of the fact that these goons have no talent in the conventional sense; Doug is neither smart nor skilled, and we laugh at him because he is clear mockery of any sort of sporting ideal. Beyond that, he occupies a world that is so tacky that it is simply hilarious; the movie is at its best when it lovingly makes fun of the amazingly vulgar world of the minor-league hockey player. Doug is very sympathetic, however, because he is tough as nails and willing to take a nasty one for his teammate, and in the end it is this quality that ends up turning the tide for his team. We root for him because he is the type of person we like to be--a tough but ultimately kind-hearted lug who overcomes the odds by determination. At the same time the movie avoids the trap of taking itself seriously, and in the end gives us some good not-particularly-clean fun.