Convoluted script didn't make me laugh enough.

Rating: 5/10 (26 November 2009)

With so much adulation heaped on this 1977 satire of minor league hockey, this critic was prepared to laugh hysterically. But sadly there were only a few big laughs and some muted chuckling that escaped my lips. All the makings were here for a terrific sports movie. It's just too bad the film tried to do so much else when it should have just stuck with the on-ice antics or the antics on the road trips. The locations, wardrobe, and cheapness of minor league hockey at that time are all spot-on. The dialog is crude; scandalously so for the time it was released. But that's the way these guys would have talked to one another. The Hansons...... oh those Hansons! Absolutely hilarious! But why so much time dedicated to the wives and girlfriends??? Paul Newman is top billed here as player/coach Reggie Dunlop, a man who was once a great player but is now barely hanging on in both respects. His team stinks, his wife has left him, and he just seems helpless. And that's part of the problem with Newman in this film. He really doesn't add up to much. The supporting characters seem to get all the interesting lines and things to do. By the end of the film, the viewer could certainly care less if he wins his wife back even though we are constantly brow-beaten by this subplot. We are led to believe that he is sleeping with a teammate's wife, but this subplot also seems to go nowhere. Strother Martin steals every scene away from the blue-eyed star as well.
I don't know if the film meanders mostly because a woman wrote this script or what exactly is the deal. Since her brother had experience as a hockey player, she should have just stuck with the team and their plight. Too much time is wasted on relationships that end up having no bearing on the team's performance. There is much made initially about the town's main factory closing, and then this is dropped too. There is much talk about the team perhaps moving to Florida, but this is just a ruse devised by Newman.... for who knows what reason. It just isn't clear what any character's motivation is. The film churns on for just over two hours and really, besides the parts with the Hanson's antics, turns out to be much ado about nothing. Is this a sports movie, a relationship movie, a social commentary about industrial towns???
Maybe it helps if you're a hockey fan.... 5 of 10 stars.
The Hound.