The feel-good sports flick might be the most formulaic of film subgenres. You could argue it's even more familiar to us than the slasher movie. How many times have you seen this in a movie: a down-on-their-luck sports team gets a down-on-his-luck coach to whip them into shape, but the coach doesn't want to be there, he tries to get out of it, he ends up bonding with some of the team over their quirky individuality, he starts seeing within them a chance at redemption, they work hard in preparation for the big game, it looks like all hope is lost when the team suddenly lose hope so the coach has to make a big speech, where typically he realises that he has actually regained confidence in the team, and therefore himself (redemption arc).
If you grew up in the '90s like me, you probably know "Champions"/"The Mighty Ducks", "Cool Runnings", maybe "The Air Up There". Prior to that, there's "Bad News Bears", "Hoosiers", maybe also "A League of their Own", though I haven't seen that one, but it seems like a safe bet.
I don't blame them for basically making the same movie over and over again, with changes in sport and location. The formula works; it's like they finally discovered the secret of alchemy: how to turn rubbish into gold.
I particularly don't mind when somebody like Taika Watiti is at the helm. Watiti breathes new life into this formula. I mostly watched it because of him, and the fact that the movie is set in American Samoa, and I've never seen a movie set in Polynesia before.
The movie is made with warm humour, and an eye for detail, and an understanding of place, and what makes Polynesia special. Note details like Sunday being church day, the whole island's speed limit being a slow crawl, the local cop radioing his mother for details.
Also, there's the fa'fa'fiine. Probably few know about the role of transgenderism in Samoan society. Remember what I said about the coach bonding with individual team members over their individuality? And the bit about Watiti breathing new life into clichés? Here's the best example of both: Watiti uses the current issue of transgenderism to reinvigorate this old cliché, making the individual problem the character has something instantly recognisable, and also making it involve an obscure fact about a fascinating culture.
I'd be lying if I said the movie probably wouldn't have been more interesting with less of the formula, but would it have been as successful?
There is one other problem with the movie, though, and that's the casting of Michael Fassbender as the coach. You can forgive him for never dropping his Irish accent in character as a Dutchman, in a movie this good-natured and charming. But can you forgive them for casting him in the first place? Fassbender is a great actor. Check out "Hunger" and "Shame" for two of the best performances of the new millennium. But whose idea was it to cast an actor that disturbingly real and intense in a movie this cheerful and easygoing? He just doesn't fit. They should have cast a Ryan Reynolds or a Ben Affleck type. Somebody with an easy command of Hollywood charisma, who can appear troubled but you know a wisecrack and a wink at the audience is never far away. Fassbender seems to be working from a reserve of pain the audience can't begin to understand. This isn't his world: watching him here I kept being reminded of the character he played in "12 Years a Slave", who was just pure sadism.
