...and a hockey game broke out.

Rating: 8/10 (8 May 2001)

This was the first time in a number of years I checked out "Slap Shot". I remember the movie being very profane, dirty and extremely funny. It still is a funny film after all these years though I did notice a number of things in the movie that made it even more than just a funny sports movie.
Nancy Dowd's very observant screenplay and George Roy Hill's sharp direction showed the trials and tribulations of being a minor league hockey player: the long road trips, the drinking & partying, the competition against other teams that are going through the same lifestyle.
(Arguably, writer/director Ron Shelton did a slightly better job dealing with the same plot in a different minor league sports movie several years later: "Bull Durham".)
The characters and the subplots still have me laughing out loud: Dunlop putting a bounty on a competing player's head, the rug-wearing radio announcer (wonderfully played by Andrew Duncan), the French Canadian goaltender (Yvon Barrette) who makes Yogi Berra's malaprop statements sound grammatically correct, the underhanded general manager (the late, great Strother Martin), the unexpected striptease by the Chiefs leading scorer Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean) which catches many players, who were beating each other on the ice, totally off guard. I love the line by Ogle Oglethorpe (Ned Dowd, Nancy's brother) after beating up a Chief player and then seeing Braden taking his uniform off: "This is disgusting...." How about that for irony!
I do have to admit that what still has me laughing but not as much as before was the overall homophobic atmosphere in the movie. To insult another player (or, most notably, the Chiefs absentee owner) is to call someone a derogatory name. Despite mentioning this observation, I still laughed out loud when Dunlop taunted a competing team's goaltender, among other names, a lesbian. As a hockey fan since the 1970s. I believe screenwriter Nancy Dowd was very accurate in depicting what goes on inside and outside the locker room. At the same time, when it comes to trash talking, and the possibility that the person on player may trash, might be gay (e.g. a character in "Les Boys". For the record, I was not too impressed with the movie.), I wonder if "Slap Shot" is more dated that I first thought (bad fashion notwithstanding).
The relationship between Reggie Dunlop and his still married but separated wife still sticks out to me as very bittersweet. Jennifer Warren's performance stood out for me when I first saw the movie and it's one of the many strong aspects of the movie. I got the feeling that as much as she loves Reggie, she was not a happy woman in the relationship.
Paul Newman gave some great performances before (Hud, Cool Hand Luke, The Hustler) and after (The Verdict, Nobody's Fool, arguably, The Color of Money & Absence of Malice) "Slap Shot". I certainly don't think it's his best work but I though he did a good job of what it was like to be an "old man" in a young man's sport.
Note: For legal reasons, a number of songs that appeared in the movie on the big screen and on cable TV do not appear on the U.S. home video version. They include "Get Right Back Where We Started From" by Maxine Nightingale, Elton John's "Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word", Leo Sayer's "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing", Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon" and a song called "A Little Bit South of Saskatoon".