Raunchy, filthy, sophomoric, f**king hilarious movie with a great message....

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2005)

I just recently watched this movie again. I forgot how damned hilarious it is and how easily you can miss some of the funnier lines tucked inside an endless stream of profanity and crazy sports hi-jinx. The movie is set in a run down steel town ( I lived in Johnstown, PA, the town where they filmed slap shot in the 70s and then again in the 90s) that is finished financially and so is the team. Their player-coach Reg Dunlop, played superbly by Paul Newman, launches a plan to save the team some way some how. He involuntarily recruits the team to come along for the ride accept for Ned Braden, played by Michael Ontkeen, the one player who sees through Dunlop's scheme and sees the eventual goon show as a degradation of the sport.
You will love this movie. Sure it is a statement on violence in sports, but having attended Johnstown Jet games as well as Johnstown Wings and Redwing games, the real teams that played where Slapshot was filmed, the violence was not too overdone. In the end, Ned Braden counter's the violence with his own ideas... and you have to listen to Chiefs' announcer, Carr, in that scene, the irony is freaking hilarious!!!!!! The guys who really steal the movie are the Hanson Brothers Played by two of the Carlson brothers and by Dave Hanson. The third Carlson, Hanson, was actually called up to the NHL and missed his Hollywood moment. I saw these guys play hockey in Johnstown, they were only mildly over the top in the movie.
I think the movie also runs in the tradition of Easy Rider as well. You never hear anyone talk about this but it is an anti authority movie I think. The owner is mysteriously missing and is just referred to as the Charlestown Chiefs Corporation. Unlike easy Rider though, Reg Dunlop gets to confront the heartless soul of the corporation who only sees the chiefs' as a write off. Another great scene.
The movie is set in my old home town which is a perfect backdrop for this movie. Johnstown also was the setting for a movie of less caliber filmed in the earlier 80s, an early Tom Cruise vehicle, All Right Moves. It's kind of interesting to me to see scenes in each movie that were only filmed feet apart. Another Ironic note to me is that the player coach,and also my next door neighbor, for a very short time for the Johnstown Redwings (the team in town after the movie) was a Christian who never swore and went to church regularly!