Film reviews: Goat | Whistle | It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
It may be formulaic, but animated sports movie Goat has a certain scrappy charm, writes Alistair Harkness
Set in a Zootropolis-esque animal world, animated family movie Goat uses the tried-and-tested playbook of an underdog sports movie to deliver a standard you-can-do-anything message for kids on half-term. The sport in question is a basketball-style contact sport called roarball that’s so dominated by larger animals that a literal goat who dreams of one day becoming an acronymous G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) is destined to be a laughing stock.
That’s the fate the film’s titular hero Will – nicely voiced by Stranger Things star Caleb McLaughlin – is facing until his cash-strapped home team recruits him in the hope that his novelty value will revive the team’s fortunes. Though formulaic, Goat’s got scrappy charm – and its painterly animation style gives it and a pleasingly rough-hewn feel.
Like the Final Destination movies it’s trying to emulate, Whistle has a nifty hook for prematurely killing off its teen protagonists. It takes the form of a Mayan death whistle that brings the date (and manner) someone would have died rapidly forward if they happen to be in its vicinity when someone blows it. Why said whistle is found in a high school is given only cursory attention by director Corin Hardy (The Nun), but he also knows this is just an engine for delivering funhouse jolts, which he does with plenty of dumb-fun brio. Nick Frost co-stars.
READ MORE: Film Reviews: Send Help | Twinless | The Chronology of Water | Hamlet | The Shepherd and the Bear
Following on from her excellent Janis Joplin doc Little Girl Blue, Amy Berg explores another gone-too-soon rockstar with the titular subject of her new film It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley. Dispelling myths about Buckley’s tragic drowning in 1997, and shifting away from the obvious parallels with his own musician father Tim Buckley (who died from a drug overdose at 28), it refocuses attention on his astonishing voice and the women who raised, supported, loved and shaped him.
There’s some great archival and performance footage too that shows there’s much more to him than his definitive cover of Hallelujah.
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