Next Goal Wins: Fact-Based Taika Waititi Sports Comedy Fails to Score

By Chris Knight

Rating: B-

It may sound churlish to say this, but I was glad Taika Waititi didn’t win the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival for Next Goals Wins.

His newest film is sweet and funny and a real crowd-pleaser to be sure, but it’s not his best work, and I’d hate for him to be rewarded when we all know he can do better. When you’re as good a filmmaker as he is, you don’t get a blue ribbon for just showing up.

The winning film this year, by the way, was the topical and timely and uncomfortably hilarious American Fiction; I can’t wait for it to open in cinemas so more people can see it. And Waititi has won the prize once already, for 2019’s Jojo Rabbit, in which the filmmaker also starred as a bizarrely jovial Adolf Hitler, as imagined by a young German boy during the Second World War. It’s brilliant.

But back to Next Goal Wins. Waititi has made small films (Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople) and big ones like the aforementioned Jojo. He has made one of the best and funniest Marvel movies (Thor: Ragnarok) and one of the worst and least funny ones (Thor: Love and Thunder).

But he has never (until now) made a film “inspired by true events.” Nor has he ever made such a safe story as this one, which melds the classic underdog sports narrative with the parable of the fish-out-of-water coach who learns more from the players than he could ever hope to teach them. Just imagine if Ted Lasso was an asshole.

The Ted in this case is named Tom. Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender), a short-tempered football coach, was fired from the U.S. men’s national team in 2011. He wound up as the new head coach for American Samoa, a derelict squad that once lost a match 31-nil against Australia, still the biggest defeat in senior international match history.

When he arrives in the remote and tiny territory (population about the same as Medicine Hat) Rongen is not charmed by the islanders’ simple, friendly ways. Instead, he lashes out at them, bemoaning that they’ll never make anything of themselves.

He has particular ire for Jaiyah (played by transgender actress Kaimana), not because of any intolerance for what the Samoans call fa’afafine, but merely because she’s often late for practice, and never seems to be taking things seriously.

If only he knew! In fact, Next Goal Wins is full of if-only-we/he/she/they-knew moments, from the hidden backstory of Rongen and his estranged wife (Elisabeth Moss), to the reason he keeps listening to saved voicemails from his daughter, to the question of which team member is going to show up in yet another unexpected occupation. (One of the film’s running gags is that America Samoa is so small, and its team so underfunded, that everyone needs several jobs both to make end meets and keep the island staffed.)

There are several other running gags in the movie although, much like some of the more laidback members of the soccer team, I don’t think they’re running when anyone isn’t looking. There’s the extreme religiosity of the islanders, for instance. (Waititi pops up in a cameo as a priest/narrator, wearing the weirdest set of prosthetic teeth this side of Things We Do in the Shadows.) And their mild manners, so at odds with those of the brash outsider.

Fassbender, so good in so much of what he does, may have been miscast in this project, or at least misdirected. He seems to learn small life lessons whenever the plot needs to move forward, only to stagger backwards again until the next big crisis. And it doesn’t help when his ex tells him: “We didn’t send you there to help them. We sent you there to help you.” Any more on the nose and she’d have poked him on the proboscis and added: “Boop.”

True to form, Next Goals Wins ends on a montage of the characters boogeying on a beach, intercut with images of their real-life counterparts, and a selection of where-are-they-now blurbs.

It’s decent, adequate fun. But it wasn’t the people’s choice, and it’s not mine. If I could take only one movie with me to a small Pacific Island, this wouldn’t be it.

Next Goal Wins. Directed by Taika Waititi. Starring Michael Fassbender, Oscar Kightley, and Kaimana. In theatres November 17.