A fun film that's going to appeal to a relatively small audience.

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2011)

Reviewing a movie that came out in 1977 means thinking about what kind of people might want to watch this movie, because you're basically up against everything else that's on the shelf at the DVD store or that you see scrolling through the listings on Netflix or whatever.
First of all: "Slap Shot" has a lot of swearing. A LOT of swearing. F-bombs, among other swear words, being thrown helter-skelter all over the place. It also has some "boobs and bums" shots, including what was probably the largest group mooning scene prior to the battlefield mooning scene in Mel Gibson's movie "Braveheart." And it drops some homosexual epithets and some graphic sexual references. So this is not a movie that you're going to want to sit down with the kids or the church pastor or your elderly and sensitive mother to watch.
Second, this is a movie that is really about hockey. Hockey does frame some relationship sub-plots and there's some slice-of-life background stuff, but it is unabashedly a sports movie. So people who don't like sports, and especially don't like hockey, are going to want to take a pass on "Slap Shot." Third, this movie is set in a time (the 1970's) and place (a small semi-industrial town facing the closing of the factory that is the major employer) that younger people may just not understand or identify with. So people who are still uphill from thirty may draw a blank on this film.
So who is going to want to watch it? Well, first of all, if you're a Paul Newman fan, you're going to want to see this film. Newman plays the lead, Reggie "Reg" Dunlop, a player who is also coach for the minor-league hockey team the Charlestown Chiefs.
If you enjoy a movie that's full of bawdy, raunchy fun; that speaks of dealing with disappointments and the powerlessness of being just a depreciable asset on somebody's balance sheet without being preachy or angry or depressing; and that is about loving hockey, and minor league hockey at that, in the days when players didn't wear protective head-gear and a brawl with intervals of skating was the way to play the game, this is your kind of movie and you're going to love it.
Newman's character, Dunlop, is middle-aged, this is probably his last season in hockey as a player, it's been his whole life. The Chiefs, the team he plays for and coaches, are one of the few entertainments to be found in a gritty blue-collar town that's facing the closure of the factory that's the major employer. Always on the ragged edge of perdition, stocked with players who are one waiver away from having to get a REAL job, the Chiefs are facing disbandment by the unknown owner because, as a business proposition, they're a dead loss.
Dunlop's wife, played by Jennifer Warren, has long ago gotten tired of the role of hockey wife-- husband forever on the road, the vagabond life of moving when he gets traded, the groupies who go after her husband, the uncertainty-- and has left him. She's just had enough and without bitterness or angst is moving on. Dunlop hasn't accepted the finality of her decision, and throughout the movie he keeps trying to find a way to make her change her mind.
Dunlop's assistant and fellow player is Ned Braden, played by Michael Ontkean. Braden didn't come into hockey through the blue-collar route of junior leagues and working his way up through the minors; he played on a scholarship at college, he's preppie, he's got a future outside of hockey if he wants it. His wife, Lily Braden, played by Lindsay Crouse completely deadpan, is also college-educated. She comes from a wealthy family and she HATES the whole minor-league, small-town, small-world, hockey-wife scene. She doesn't fit and she knows it, and endures it only by drinking early and often.
Dunlop finds out the team is to be disbanded, and decides that if he can somehow cobble together a winning season, he can persuade the anonymous owner to sell the team instead of dissolving it. And so he sets out to inspire his rag-tag bunch of no-hopers and losers to win, to scratch and scrape and fight out victories any way they can.
And he's aided in this by three new players who've just arrived, the Hanson brothers, who are certifiably nuts but can skate, can shoot, and can FIGHT like junk-yard pitbulls, and who are happily madly satisfied to win any way their coach tells them to.
And that sets the stage for all the rest. Make no mistake, this movie has some howlingly hysterical moments, including one of the all-time best striptease scenes ever made.
I loved this movie, and if you like sports movies and aren't a sensitive soul who cringes at the language and the non-PC references and nudity, and especially if you enjoy watching Paul Newman, you're going to like this movie too. It's a real gem of it's type.