Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
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STEPHEN THOMPSON, HOST:
The underdog sports comedy "Next Goal Wins" is based on the true story of American Samoa's soccer team and its attempts to improve on its status as a worldwide laughingstock.
LINDA HOLMES, BYLINE: The film is from Taika Waititi and stars Michael Fassbender as the real-life coach tasked with helping the team compete in a World Cup qualifying match. I'm Linda Holmes.
THOMPSON: And I'm Stephen Thompson. Today we are talking about "Next Goal Wins" on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
THOMPSON: Joining us today is one of the hosts of NPR's Code Switch podcast, Gene Demby. Hey, Gene.
GENE DEMBY, BYLINE: What's good, y'all? I'm so glad to be here.
HOLMES: Hey, Gene.
THOMPSON: It is so great to have you.
So "Next Goal Wins" is based on the real-life exploits of American Samoa's soccer team, which experienced embarrassment on a global scale when it lost a match to Australia by the score of 31 to nothing back in 2001. Ten years later, as the World Cup qualifiers approached, American Samoa looked to improve its lot by hiring a down-on-his-luck Dutch American coach named Thomas Rongen. He's played by Michael Fassbender. What follows will be familiar to anyone who's seen the 2014 documentary, also called "Next Goal Wins," which documents Rongen's attempts to turn the team around.
But the new film will also be familiar to anyone who has ever seen an underdog sports movie, be it "Cool Runnings," "The Mighty Ducks" or "The Bad News Bears." You take a wacky team of misfits, an exasperated coach with no other options and a whole lot of training montages - you know the drill. "Next Goal Wins" also stars Kaimana as Jaiyah, who is faʻafafine, an American Samoan term referring to gender fluidity. The real-life Jaiyah became the first openly transgender player to compete in a World Cup qualifying match. The film was directed and co-written by Taika Waititi and is in theaters on Friday.
Linda, I'm going to start with you. What did you think of "Next Goal Wins"?
HOLMES: I really liked this movie. I think, as you said, if you have seen an underdog sports movie, you're going to see just about every beat coming at some level. I think they've freely fictionalized enough elements to make it fit even better into the narrative that they're looking for. But the underdog sports comedy is one of the genres that has kind of really faltered as they've stopped making kind of mid-sized movies. And so to me, it's - look, this is not an Earth-shattering movie. It is, I would dare to say, inessential in some ways. But I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it is the kind of movie that I always want to be available to people. And I want - you know, this is a story I've heard before. I just want to hear it again and again and again.
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: How about you, Gene?
DEMBY: So just to give you context of what I was going through when I sat down to watch this movie the other day. My soccer team, Tottenham Hotspur, lost an absolutely chaotic game. Like, it was - it was almost like a "Ted Lasso" script. There were two red cards...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
DEMBY: ...A bunch of our players got injuries that will keep them out probably for weeks, if not months. So I needed, like, a palate cleanser when I sat down to...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
DEMBY: ...Watch this movie. And that's what I got. It was really dope. It was a lot of fun. It's very broad and sitcomy (ph). But, you know, a lot of the jokes actually land. The performances were really winning. Speaking of "Ted Lasso," I wish that we had more time with some of those characters. Like, you almost wish...
HOLMES: Yeah.
DEMBY: ...This was a sort of serialized thing. But it was a lot of fun. It was - like Linda said, it also was like a trifle. I definitely was...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
DEMBY: ...Like, OK. It was a nice, fun, pleasant...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
DEMBY: I'm not mad...
HOLMES: Yeah.
DEMBY: ...I saw it at all, not at all.
HOLMES: Yeah, no.
THOMPSON: Yeah. I had a pretty similar reaction to this film. And for my context, I did not have to root for Tottenham Hotspur.
DEMBY: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: But I have had the experience of coaching a team of wacky, lovable, misfit...
DEMBY: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: ...Losers.
DEMBY: You're not talking about the PCHH team, are you?
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: Oh, my God, our team would be even worse.
DEMBY: OK.
THOMPSON: But I was coach of The Onion's softball team...
DEMBY: Oh, my God.
THOMPSON: ...Back in the late '90s and early aughts. And we once had a two-game stretch where we were outscored by a total of 72 to nothing in two...
DEMBY: Oh...
THOMPSON: ...Softball games...
DEMBY: ...My God.
THOMPSON: ...Each with a one-hour time limit.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLMES: Surprised that was enough time for them to run around the bases that many times.
THOMPSON: I know. It was as hapless as the score made it sound. And the following week, after that two-game stretch, we lost a game 9 to 1. And scoring that one run was like winning 10 Super Bowls.
DEMBY: (Laughter).
HOLMES: Yeah.
THOMPSON: Those are the kind of sports stakes that I can get behind. And I love not just a loser but, like, a spectacular loser, a record-setting loser, the worst team in the entire world and the attempt to go from worst team in the entire world to maybe the second- or third-worst team in the entire world.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NEXT GOAL WINS")
DAVID FANE: (As Ace) The qualifiers are only four weeks away, Mr. Rongen. All I want from our team is just one goal - one goal.
THOMPSON: I appreciate the very, very modest stakes of this film. And I appreciate the modest stakes of this film in the context of Taika Waititi's career, also, because one of the things that kind of bugged me about "Jojo Rabbit" was he was taking that kind of slightly whimsical kind of storytelling style and applying it to a story about the Holocaust. And this is taking that whimsical storytelling style and applying it to a knockabout, underdog sports comedy. And that, to me, is the right sense of scale, the right sense of stakes. And I had a ton of fun. It was mildly diverting. Will I remember it after we finish this conversation? Not necessarily.
DEMBY: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: But I got a kick out of it.
HOLMES: The other thing I like about it is, I think when you say, Stephen, that it has appropriately sized stakes, I - one thing that I always think is important in sports fiction is to remember that the vast majority of sports people - the stakes in their life are not am I going to be the best in the world or not? Their goal is to be better than they were yesterday, better than they were last time. So there's a real charm to me. You know, I had the same feeling as you, Stephen. You know that they're not really going for are these guys is going to become world champions or even really are they going to qualify for the World Cup? You get the feeling that the ultimate stakes are can they win a game? And I appreciated that. And I also did think, like, you know, the interesting thing about this Michael Fassbender performance is that there are times when I feel like he's having a little trouble getting his arms around exactly who this guy is.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NEXT GOAL WINS")
MICHAEL FASSBENDER: (As Thomas Rongen) None of this [expletive] makes any sense. You don't even have a full squad of players out there. No wonder you're the worst team in the world.
HOLMES: At the very beginning, somebody makes a comment to him about, you should take this job and go to American Samoa to heal. And so you know something has happened, but for a while, to me, it was a little hard to get a sense of who this guy was. There's a sense that he drinks too much. There's a sense that, you know, he's separated from his wife, and it's a little vague on that. But I think as they go on, they do do a good job, particularly with the relationship between him and Jaiyah. I was invested in that, in that relationship and in his understanding that she was very, very talented and that she was a leader on the team and that the guys on the team didn't see her the way that he kind of assumed that they would. It's just so warm. The other performances, the guy who's, like, the head of the soccer federation - I think that's a really funny and entertaining performance.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NEXT GOAL WINS")
OSCAR KIGHTLEY: (As Tavita) Yeah, it was just him. But the fact that he responded - absolutely incredible. I really think things are going to turn around, you know, Sam? It's like in "The Matrix." I think this man is the Neo.
THOMPSON: That is Oscar Kightley, who is very, very funny in this movie.
HOLMES: Yes. And I think he's very funny. And I think there's also, you know, something to be said for the story of how this team losing by 31 goals - how it affected them. You know, that's real people when that happens, you know? That's - those are real people who have to get up and keep living their lives. And, you know, there's a lot of reflecting on sort of what that did to interest in soccer in their community and what it did to their reputations. And I was kind of invested in all that. I liked it.
DEMBY: The head of the federation, he keeps saying, I just need one goal, right? Michael Fassbender is like, I can't do anything with the team. He's just like, one goal. That's all I need - one goal, right? Like, the stakes are both really low, to Stephen's point, and also, like, sufficiently daunting. One goal - they've never scored a goal in their entire history.
In American soccer, there's this guy, Matt Turner. And in college, there was this clip of him famously letting in the dumbest goal you've ever seen in your life. Like, the ball flies a million feet into the air, he tries to catch it, and it just bounces in behind him. And he just, like, collapses to the ground, you know, mortified. And he became a laughingstock. And now, you know, he's, like, a professional soccer player. And he was like, it was really demoralizing to have my lowest - like, one of the most embarrassing things that ever happened to me happen in front of the entire sports-watching world, right? And so, you know, there's a whole subplot about the keeper who was in the goal for that 31-nil drubbing. It's, like, this thing that, like, haunts him all the time, right? That's how it would be if the lowest moment of your sporting life became this, like, moment of international mockery. Yeah, you would carry that around for a long time.
HOLMES: Yeah. But it's interesting to think, I think from a character perspective, and I think this is one of the things that this movie, in its own kind of light way, gets at is, like, what does it take to be the kind of person who will go out there representing your country in a situation where everybody expects you to lose by 30 goals and you know that your odds of competing meaningfully are probably very minimal, but to find it in yourself to still practice and still work and still try to get better and still be a team - like, I just think that's interesting to think about and not necessarily the most common sports narrative.
THOMPSON: I wanted to touch on some of the - a little bit of controversy swirling around this film and the way that it tells the story of Jaiyah. There's a scene early in this movie in which Rongen is kind of deadnaming her. They get into a, you know, kind of a fight on the pitch, and she shoves him and then apologizes to him. There's been some kind of talk around this film, like maybe this film should have centered her instead of him. Having her apologize to him in that scene is a little squeamishness-inducing.
HOLMES: I mean, I definitely can see where that's coming from, particularly the centering - the question of centering him versus her. But I felt like the message of the movie was pretty clear, that they have her apologize to him, as you might have to apologize anytime you shove your coach. And I would definitely agree that I might have left that out and structured that differently. But I think also at that point, he's too much of a jerk to start that kind of reconciliation, maybe.
THOMPSON: Yeah, and I think this film makes him a little too much of a jerk in general.
DEMBY: Say more about that.
THOMPSON: You know, obviously, like, this sort of underdog sports movie, the coach is always reluctant, and part of the hero's journey is always that the hero resists the journey and...
HOLMES: This is your whole "Bad News," "Ducks" thing is...
THOMPSON: Yeah.
DEMBY: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: You got to have the coach's, like, this is my last stop. I quit. I give up.
HOLMES: And I don't care. That's part of it.
THOMPSON: For one thing, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Rongen himself held those views or treated the real Jaiyah this way. In a movie that is otherwise so light and so enjoyable and so kind of knockabout, uplifting, I - to me, it took me out of the joy of the movie a little bit.
DEMBY: They do talk about fa'afafine in the context of American Samoa that it is unremarkable for someone to be trans or nonbinary, right? I'm just wondering if they introduced that conflict sort of to underline that, here, Jaiyah being this kind of singular athlete would have been something that nobody even, like, blinked an eye at, right?
HOLMES: I agree with that. I think they did want to make that point. I think it seems like making that point that she was so much part of her team without those guys acting like they thought it was weird or anything like that when the expectation so often in American sports and perhaps sports in other countries as well, you know, that athletes are very apprehensive about gender identity and sexual identity and things like that - I think they did probably want to introduce the idea that her team was not, and so it may have been that they needed a way for him to kind of come in, as you say, with that janky lens and for him to be kind of corrected in that way. I also can understand what Stephen's saying in that it might have been interesting to see this story as, like, the story of her and her...
DEMBY: For sure.
HOLMES: ...Entire playing career. It may be as simple as they based it on the documentary about Rongen coming to coach the team.
DEMBY: And she - when she is introduced, she's obviously, like, introduced as, like, major character, right? She has a whole, like...
THOMPSON: Right.
DEMBY: ...Intro scene, like a...
THOMPSON: She gets, like, a slo-mo intro.
HOLMES: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
DEMBY: It seemed like, oh, for a second, she is about to become the sort of thrust of the movie. And it would - like you said, Stephen, it would make a ton of sense for that to have been the case.
THOMPSON: Yeah, she's more integral to this team than this carpetbagger who shows up, throws a bunch of tantrums that completely do not help.
HOLMES: Right. It is kind of part of it for the coach in a story like this - for the coach to be like, I don't care. I'm a jerk. But I do think there's something about him that has, like, a very - that's what I mean when I say I feel like they never quite got that character exactly right. You can wonder why - he's kind of sent to coach this team. And eventually they kind of say to him, well, you didn't - you weren't really sent there to help them. You were sent there to help you. And I was like, well, that's...
DEMBY: Kind of...
HOLMES: ...Kind of a not a great thing to do to this team of guys. Like, we sent you this coach not expecting them to help you? Like...
DEMBY: He will never go to therapy, so we're going to - you're going to be his therapy for the next eight months of your life.
HOLMES: Exactly. Exactly. So, like, he, as a character, was my biggest kind of bump with the movie - was his character was a little roughly made for me.
THOMPSON: One thing I did like about his arc and that I definitely appreciated as a sports fan was there is a undercurrent in this movie of kind of establishing and wrapping its arms around the fact that coaches throwing tantrums, players throwing tantrums - this has been a part of sports for much longer than any of us have been alive, let alone been following sports. And I like the way this movie gets at the fact that that stuff just doesn't work.
HOLMES: Yeah.
THOMPSON: That stuff doesn't make players play better.
HOLMES: And it doesn't make you a better coach.
THOMPSON: It doesn't make you a better coach. And so I liked the fact that this movie does, with him, at least kind of toy with the idea that he becomes a better coach when he realizes that he needs to stop acting like that. When he throws tantrums, he looks ridiculous.
HOLMES: I did appreciate the fact, I think, that they really just go for it. You know, you mentioned, Stephen, in the intro the training montages. When you get to the training montage in this movie, the one where he's like, all right, we're going to get you in shape and start - they just lean directly into it. They play the music. You get the guys running. You get them doing the drills and the ladder.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "NEXT GOAL WINS")
FASSBENDER: (As Thomas Rongen) The object is to get the ball in the net. Concentrate. Look where you're shooting it. What the hell?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character, screaming).
FASSBENDER: (As Thomas Rongen) Don't look at me. Look at the ball.
HOLMES: You know, you get the - some of them are good at it, and some of them - you get the moments where he sees a player and he's like, who's that? Like...
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HOLMES: ...They just lean right into it. There's no effort to sort of - this is not a subverting tropes situation.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLMES: This is wrapping your arms around it, giving it a big hug...
DEMBY: Absolutely.
HOLMES: ...Saying, nice trope.
THOMPSON: (Laughter).
HOLMES: I love you. I love you. I love you.
DEMBY: (Laughter).
THOMPSON: I think we can agree that this is a fun one. Watch it with your folks on Thanksgiving.
HOLMES: Yeah.
THOMPSON: This is that kind of movie. We want to know what you think about "Next Goal Wins." Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Gene Demby, Linda Holmes, thanks so much for being here.
HOLMES: Thank you, bud.
DEMBY: Appreciate you.
THOMPSON: We want to take a moment to thank our POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR+ subscribers. We appreciate you so much for showing your support of NPR. If you haven't signed up yet, want to show your support and listen to this show without any sponsor breaks, head over to plus.npr.org/happyhour or visit the link in our show notes.
This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. And Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all tomorrow.
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