This is a f**** the world punk rock movie and a wonderful sports comedy.

Rating: 10/10 (20 November 2016)

Fierce and unapologetic, helmed by a tough mother like George Roy Hill and scripted by a woman (yeah!), this is a hockey movie for those who love hockey and also those who have no idea what hockey is much about aside from the fights- and believe me there are lots and lots and lots of fights here. When it ended my wife (who has become a hockey fanatic over the past few years) commented on how it's a movie where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: it's not a terribly quotable film, but you leave having gone through a full experience.
Slap shot is grimy and sometimes very sleazy, and with the exception of Harry S Truman from Twin speaks, the Chiefs follow coach/player Paul Newmans lead: we got to get people seeing this team again and win some (bleep) games, so he goes for a sort of nihilistic approach: screw it! Get in fights! Rile up the refs! Get the audience involved! Then maybe the team won't be folded and shut down by the owner but rather sold to some Floridian.
There even is an arc for Newmans character somewhere in the midst of what is a precursor to Animal House, a raucously anarchic studio comedy, only they're out of college and working class dudes who don't mind getting some teeth knocked out or getting a lip sewn up post (or dying) game-play. It's extremely slight though and if anything the players overall desire to get the hell out of their current state (i.e. they try to play 'old fashioned' hockey without uh violence and then when they hear from blustery p'd-off old Strother Martin there are NHL scouts in the stands, that's all that registers from the managers motivational speech so BACK TO THE CREAMING THOSE BASTARDS!) makes it that much funnier.
There are stretches here where the laughs aren't plenty - it's much a 70s movie that way - but much of this is so hysterically spot on because it is all about behavior. Sure, the players on their bus (plus some local girls following on another bus) mooning some angry rival team onlookers is one thing, and that can be funny. But Hill is smart as a director to let so much of it be about the personalities of these players - those three brother goons who play with their electric train set and seem more like one entity with three heads and pairs of glasses are a prime example - and also how Newman does a lot with just a look or a reaction, how he interacts with his friends girlfriend as she drives at top speeds in her van, how he is both 'don't give a f***' but giving a f*** at the same time for what counts.
Did I mention how wonderful Newman is here? Kind of? I must say again that he is the heart and soul of this movie, a true star who continues (maybe at this point caps off) a career of anti establishment I-do-things-my-way forces of nature like the Hustler and Cool Hand Luke. He can be brash and crude as this guy, but damn is he charming and clever and a character only a complete stiff upper lipped being couldn't get behind.
Slap Shot is a great comedy for the reason that we as the audience see all the truth that is there, in this case the dirty, foul mother and scabrous lives of (semi) professional hockey players, and that they are not in on the joke of themselves. And if my wife was somewhat correct that on a first viewing its not the most quotable thing ever, there's a constant energy to nearly every scene where the comedy is big and bold and brutal and unapologetic. I love that kind of comedy, and in a blue collar 70s milieu that is deep down, at the end of it all, political too (working class vs the rich, a town closing a plant so jobs gone, how will they go to hockey games, etc).