Goon: Last of the Enforcers

Six years ago, Goon, a funny-as-hell hockey comedy based on a real sports figure who played shitty hockey but fought like a madman, came out and seemed to give new life to the acting career of one Seann William Scott. This sequel, directed by Goon costar Jay Baruchel, is an embarrassment from all angles. For starters, it’s sloppy—the kind of sloppy you might expect from an actor who has no clue behind the camera. The tones shift like crazy, the jokes fall flat, and the performances get killed by piss editing. The movie deals with Goon hero Doug Glatt going into retirement shortly after being named captain of his team because he can’t fight from his left side. Then it goes into a strange side story involving his work as an insurance salesman while he tries to come back, eventually getting fight training from Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber). His training includes fighting in a hockey league that has no actual hockey, just guys dressed in hockey gear, fighting. That sounds like it could be funny but, trust me, it’s not. The talented Alison Pill return as Eva, Doug’s love interest, and her talents are wasted, as are the talents of Elisha Cuthbert as her drunk pal. I laughed twice at this thing, both moments involving Doug’s insurance boss and his activities in Doug’s basement office. Otherwise, I just sort of groaned and felt bad for all involved. (Available for download on iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)

1 Birth of the DragonThis is a fictitious take on the real-life fight between Wong Jack Man and martial arts legend Bruce Lee, and it has a couple of good fight scenes in it. In fact, they could be called very good. And, yet, I’m forced to give this movie my lowest mark because those fight scenes are surrounded by crap. Picture a diamond like the blue one that the old lady had in that Titanic movie. Dip it in gold and put it in a bag with $780 million dollars and a Babe Ruth-autographed baseball, and then drop that bag into a communal spot where a bunch of sick hippos have taken massive shits and formed a virtual lake of shit. Let that bag sink to the bottom and become immersed in the lake of sick hippo shit. That’s what happens to the very good fight scenes in this movie. Lost in shit. Sick hippo shit. (Sorry to pick on hippos for this analogy, but, hey, they are huge, and, I imagine, rather disgusting when overcome by intestinal stress, making them capable of generating the amount of shit I needed for this particular illustration.) The movie deals a little bit with actual real-life fight between Lee and rival martial arts teacher Wong Jack Man, but it blows the details up to ridiculous extremes, even turning Lee and Jack Man into Batman and Robin by film’s end. It’s garbage.