GOAT

I went in expecting Space Jam with better animation and walked out having watched one of the better basketball movies made in years, animated or otherwise. GOAT is a cute premise executed with considerably more craft than you'd think. Space Jam meets Rookie of the Year meets... Idk... The Air Up There. A kid, Will, is a goat with oversized ambition in an all-animal world where the most popular sport is Roarball, a full-contact, version of basketball played against environmental obstacles, dominated by the biggest and most dangerous animals on the planet. Their society has a stance that smalls don't ball. Will doesn't agree with that philosophy.

Will watches his first Roarball game as a kid, sees Jett Fillmore, Gabrielle Union's black panther superstar, and spends the next decade chasing that his dream to play in the big leagues while stuck in a dead-end job getting bullied off every court he tries. A pickup game goes sideways when he gets overpowered by Aaron Pierre's Mane Attraction. Will goes viral with his showy skills. Ends up signing with Jett's team, the Vineland Thorns. You know the story from here. Grizzled veteran takes umbrage, kid wins them over, big bad beaten while proving the old guard can hang one last time before handing the torch to their new protégé.

The animation is impeccable, which is the least surprising thing you'll read about a Sony Pictures Animation film post-Spider-Verse. What sets it apart is the direction itself, stylized shots and inventive camera angles that feel like they were designed by someone genuinely enjoying what they're doing rather than executing a checklist. The basketball action sequences are just so fluid. One shot in the pickup game sequence is looks exactly like a classic Mead No Rules folder illustration.

The sound design and voice acting are top notch, which comes from casting capable performers rather than defaulting to celebrity stunt casting. That's not to say the cast isn't stacked. Caleb McLaughlin, David Harbour, and Nicola Coughlan from Stranger Things all appear, with McLaughlin turning in a better performance here than pretty much his entire tenure as Lucas on Stranger Things. Patton Oswalt as the Thorns' coach, a proboscis monkey named Dennis Cooper. Wayne Knight is here. Steph Curry, who produced the film, voices Lenny the giraffe.

The story loses some logic in the semifinal stretch. You don't trade an entire team mid-playoffs and cut all the players. Players can't just walk away when they want. But we needed a vitamin twist ala major league, problem is. They were already winning when this happens. It's there and it briefly interrupts the otherwise clean logic of the world. For a kids movie it doesn't matter. For anyone paying close attention though.

Other than that, GOAT is a genuinely good rags to riches underdog story, dreams to teams I guess, with a real message for the younger audience and enough craft and humor to keep everyone else engaged.

I made it through this whole review with only one goat pun. Not baaaaaaaaaad. ...sorry.