A down on his luck bouncer gets the chance of a lifetime after being enlisted as an enforcer for a hockey team.

Rating: 4/10 (12 December 2015)

Goon is based off Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey, a book accounting Doug Smith's career as a hockey enforcer most likely read by not a single "hockey" fan due to its lack of big, bright pop-up photos of players fighting one another. Now in case you're wondering why I threw quotation marks around the second "hockey" is because the hockey that Goon showcases isn't hockey at all, but street fighting on ice. Take The Rolling Stones hit 'Street Fighting Man', throw a pair of whee skates on it, cram it with a Boston accent, give it commentary by Scott Hamilton and you have a flamboyantly pathetic attempt at masculinity that could easily pass as Goon.
Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy hockey to its fullest. There's something magnificent about watching a bunch of padded meat heads blindly chase a tiny object around an enclosed cage in an attempt at smacking it into a net. It's almost like going to the races if all the Greyhounds were jacked up on 5-hour energy, creatine, and Ellio's Pizza and it took place in some 13 year old's makeshift backyard wraslin' slum. However, what's showcased in Goon isn't hockey; it's testosterone with blades and a bruise. It's trumped up adolescence screaming for their dads to come home and their moms to quit making the blue box blues and buy the real stuff.
Goon centers around Doug Glatt, a bouncer at a dive bar in Massachusetts who feels left without any achievements and must continually deal with the disappointment of a family full of doctors. One night while out with his buddy Pat at a minor league hockey game, Doug knocks an aggitated player out who climbs the glass and attempts to attack his friend. Witnessing the fight, the towns minor league team recruits him as their enforcer, a player used primarily to protect teammates and dish out beatings when necessary. Soon Doug is recruited by the Canadian Halifax Highlanders, and opposing enforcer and Doug's idol Ross Rhea begins setting his sights on him.
Behind all the awful accents, the shoddy facial hair (Except yours Liev Schrieber. It's glorious!), and the Massachusetts-is-the- biggest-hockey-purveyor-next-to-Canada (phew!) mentality, there is a story of heart and equality, of understanding and acceptance. Sean William Scott, looking like he's perpetually hiding food away in his jowls for a horde of baby birds back in his trailer, brings an honest hand to juggling a life that was once viewed as crushingly mediocre to all at once shockingly refreshing. I enjoy Sean William Scott. I don't enjoy Jay Baruchel. Will someone please stop giving him a Mohawk and tossing him in baggy jeans and flat brimmed hats from Lids? Seriously, put him in a Scrillex music video then take him out back and shoot him already.
Directed by Sundance midnight favorite Michael Dowse, Goon attempts its best Judd Apatow impression, fiddling (no pun intended) with dick and vagina jokes around a brutal yet sincere and at times humanistic concept. When we aren't feeling like buying our main character a claw foot tub full of kittens, we're trying not to want to pull the shirt over and savagely beat Jay Baruchel's character. No surprise to discover that he also penned the film with the help of Evan Goldberg, who worked on such films as Knocked Up, Superbad, and Funny People. Seriously though, Jay Baruchel must have the worst luck with women or wants to secretly live inside the vaginal walls of every woman that turns him down, because I could go forever now without seeing him wiggle his tongue between his fingers. Goon's heart is in the right place, its just been punched one too many times in the sternum to elevate its heart rate to anywhere near a healthy level.