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The cast of Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins
The cast of Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins

Pop CultureNovember 21, 2023

Is Next Goal Wins a hit or a miss? Our reviews

The cast of Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins
The cast of Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins

After opening to mixed reviews overseas, Taika Waititi’s latest film had its New Zealand premiere on Monday night. Here’s what we made of it.

After years directing acclaimed and quintessentially New Zealand films, Taika Waititi hit the mainstream in 2017 when he helmed Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok. He followed that up two years later with something completely different in the Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit. 

Since then, Waititi has dipped back into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2022’s weakly received Thor: Love and Thunder) and taken on TV projects like Our Flag Means Death and the critically beloved Reservation Dogs. Now, he’s back at the cinema with Next Goal Wins.

Based on the 2014 documentary of the same name, it’s the true story of the American Samoa football team, at one point considered the worst team in the world, as they try to qualify for the Fifa World Cup with the help of their new coach Thomas Rongen, played here by Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender. Joining him is a supporting cast of local actors including Oscar Kightley, David Fane and Rachel House, alongside Americans Will Arnett and Elisabeth Moss. 

After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier in the year, critics haven’t been particularly impressed with Next Goal Wins. It’s sitting right now at a lukewarm 42% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ahead of its release in New Zealand cinemas early next month, we headed along to the film’s New Zealand premiere to see for ourselves.

Just watch the documentary instead

Next Goal Wins follows a football team on a tiny Pacific island as they try to score just a single goal in an international match. The film features an ensemble cast of colourful characters, including players, coaches, locals and officials, all loosely (or closely) resembling real people. Yet the opening shot of Taika Waititi’s latest feature is a shot of… Taika Waititi. 

That about sums up how the movie felt to watch: like I was watching a director phone it in, both in front of and behind the camera. The story itself is Hollywood fodder – a bunch of amateur players suffer embarrassing defeats to bigger football nations and a struggling professional coach is sent to turn the team around. Michael Fassbender delivers a solid and convincing performance as the frustrated Thomas Rongen, and the ensemble cast of footballers have great chemistry. David Fane stands out as the softly-spoken, quite bad coach that Rongen replaces. 

And then there’s Waititi, playing the local priest and randomly breaking the fourth wall in the opening scene to unnecessarily explain that American Samoa is very religious (something that is made clear through a number of more subtle scenes later on). There is no reason for Waititi to be in Next Goal Wins. His role is lifted, almost identically, from the priest role he played in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Why? No idea, but it certainly doesn’t work. 

I enjoyed the soundtrack of classic Samoan hymns and I enjoyed seeing the team and lesser known actors shining. I did not enjoy the handling of Jaiyah’s story as a fa’afine player. From what I remember, and from comments she’s made since this movie was released, Jaiyah’s gender identity didn’t impact her place in the team or her relationship to Rongen. Waititi elevates her gender to become a point of tension (somewhat expected in a Hollywood story) but doesn’t elevate it enough for the clumsy education of Rongen to feel warranted. And while the story certainly feels Samoan thanks to the supporting cast, there are still a few lazy gags that are less culturally insensitive and more culturally nonsensical (after a number of jokes about the team’s religion and church, they’re shown hesitantly mumbling through a popular kids song, out of tune and out of time).  

Next Goal Wins, the 2014 documentary following the American Samoa football team as it struggles to win a single match or even score a goal, is heartwarming, funny and sensitively told. Next Goals Wins, the 2023 feature film based off the documentary and directed by Taika Waititi, is not. I’d recommend watching the documentary.

The one silver lining is that Waititi filming a Samoan movie and casting himself as a Samoan priest might finally explain why Rita Ora thinks her husband is Samoan. / Madeleine Chapman

Works better as a straight comedy

The underdog sports biopic is a format as tried as true as the rom com. While Next Goal Wins is ostensibly based on fact, and so the whole “will they or won’t they win” storyline is ingrained loosely in reality, it’s nonetheless told in a way that somehow makes you forget these were real people. 

Taika Waititi’s last non-Marvel project Jojo Rabbit may have been divisive, but it was inarguably ambitious, emotional and original. None of these can really be said about Next Goal Wins, a by-the-book comedy that does manage to generate consistent laughs, a few moments of Hollywood heartstring pulling and showcase some good performances. But while the film works best as a mainstream comedy, and one that will likely find favour with audiences going into the summer break, it fails as a biopic and when compared with Waititi’s strongest works it falls behind the pack.

It could simply be that the ensemble cast is too unwieldy for Waititi’s skills as a director. His best work, like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Boy, focus on a small, core group. In Next Goal Wins, he has a whole team to make us care about. Aside from the story of fa’afine player Jaiyah, and to a lesser extent Oscar Kightley’s team manager Tavita, we learn very little about the players or their lives. In true sports biopic fashion, most scenes of the team training sessions are shown in montage, though it would have been more powerful to linger a little bit longer on the characters themselves. Somehow, Waititi even has time to pop up himself in a bizarre cameo.

Michael Fassbender delivers as the real life coach Thomas Rongen, and the supporting cast of familiar faces are all joyous to watch when given an opportunity. But by telling the story from the perspective of possibly the least interesting personality (Rongen), and even then barely scratching the surface of his story until the final act, I can’t help but feel there was a much better film to be made with this cast of characters and this moving story. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Good cast, good laughs

My thoughts and feelings: Next Goal Wins was an enjoyable motion picture, navigating through some cultural and spiritual barriers with island humour. In a strange opening scene, Takia’s character explains how religious the island is… which is how most Pasifika move. The island pace and environment was enough to put me in a good mood (or maybe it was the wines) while the beautiful singing took me back to church. Something about a hymn vibrates your eardrums differently – IYKYK.

David Fane who plays Ace is my MVP. As super softly spoken coach, who’s just there for his people. We all need an Ace in our lives, someone to bring us back into the slow lane with some positivity and reminding us that whatever it is, it’s OK. Good cast, good laughs. / Tina Tiller

Next Goal Wins opens in cinemas on December 7, with previews beginning December 3.

Keep going!
Clockwise: The Pope’s Exorcist, Squid Game, Leo, Faraway Downs.
Clockwise: The Pope’s Exorcist, Squid Game, Leo, Faraway Downs.

Pop CultureNovember 20, 2023

New to streaming: What to watch on Netflix NZ, Neon and more this week

Clockwise: The Pope’s Exorcist, Squid Game, Leo, Faraway Downs.
Clockwise: The Pope’s Exorcist, Squid Game, Leo, Faraway Downs.

What are you going to be watching this week? We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.

The biggies

Squid Game: The Challenge (on Netflix from November 22)

A real-life Squid Game feels a little bit on the nose for a dystopia, but hey, that’s where we are in 2023 apparently. In this series, 456 players compete to win $4.56m, the largest single cash prize in reality TV ever (breaking a previous record of $2.6m). As per the hit series, each player is put through a series of games. Not per the series, players will not be killed off in droves. / Sam Brooks

Faraway Downs (on Disney+ from November 26)

Remember Baz Luhrmann’s 2008 film Australia? Probably not, because it was hyped a lot and came out to middling box office returns and even more middling reviews. The general consensus that it was simply too much movie, and a pretty disjointed one at that. So now, 15 years later, it is coming to Disney+ as a six part miniseries, using what has to be swathes of unused footage. I actually have a soft spot for the OG film – it’s very 1930s, in a good way – so I’m looking forward to this. / SB

Fargo (season five on Neon from November 22)

If you told me 10 years ago that a Coen brothers film would have a spinoff series that lasted for five seasons, I would have assumed that spinoff series would come from O Brother Where Are Thou?, not Fargo, but that’s where we are. The fifth season of this anthology series sees Ted Lasso’s Juno Temple as Dot, a seemingly typical Midwestern housewife whose past comes to haunt her, when Sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm!) comes searching for her. / SB

The notables

Doctor Who: The Star Beast (on Disney+ from November 26)

It’s been a hard few years to be a Doctor Who fan. Several mediocre seasons made it seem as though the show was destined to be cancelled for the second time in its 60-year history. But now, with returning talent behind and in front of the camera in the forms of writer Russell T Davies and stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate, it’s starting to feel like Doctor Who has been saved from extinction. The uniquely British show has partnered with Disney+, bringing international production values to a programme that has historically been made on a shoestring budget. Hype for these three specials, celebrating six decades of the time lord, is at an all time high. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Devil’s Peak (on ThreeNow from November 21)

This series, adapted from Deon Meyer’s detective novels of the same name, follows disillusioned detective Benny Griesel, who is forced back into action in crime-plagued Cape Town by a new case – a local vigilante killer with a personal vendetta is taking matters into his own hands when it comes to people committing crimes against children. Gritty! / SB

Utopia (all seasons on TVNZ+ from November 23)

In this cult hit, a community of comic book fans believe that a graphic novel predicted several disastrous epidemics, including mad cow disease, and a rumoured unpublished sequel supposedly contains further information on future world events. When one fan finds the manuscript, he and his friends find themselves as the target of a secret organisation who will kill anyone in their way to get their hands on it. I’ve not seen this one but fans speak incredibly highly of it, so if this sounds even remotely like your jam, give it a spin. (This is the original British version of the series, by the way! You can also watch the American adaptation on Prime Video if you so desire.) / SB

The films

The Pope’s Exorcist (on Neon from November 24)

This isn’t your mother’s Exorcist, it’s your Pope’s exorcist! This horror is, somewhat surprisingly, based on not one but two books by Father Gabriel Amorth – An Exorcist Tells His Story and An Exorcist: More Stories (sadly “The Exorcist” was already taken). All you need to know, really, is that Russell Crowe plays a scooter-riding priest in the 1980s. I’ll let you take it from there. / SB

Leo (on Netflix from November 21)

The second animated film from Adam Sandler’s production company stars the man himself as Leo, a jaded and desperate lizard who gets depressed after a visitor to the classroom where he lives suggest he’s old. Sure! When the chance to explore the world presents itself, Leo jumps at the chance to be taken home by his students but surprise surprise, it turns out he can talk. Hijinks, presumably, ensue. SB

Salt (on Neon from November 24)

Is Salt a good movie? Maybe, maybe not. But what it definitely is, is a film where Angelina Jolie knocks things and people down while wearing a very conspicuous wig. Those movies (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Wanted, Mr and Mrs Smith, Maleficent) are always guaranteed good times, and Salt is no exception to the rule. / SB

Netflix

November 20

Stamped from the Beginning

November 21

Leo

November 22

Squid Game: The Challenge

Crime Diaries: The Celebrity Stylist

I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America: Season Two

November 23

My Little Pony: Make Your Mark: Chapter 6

My Daemon

November 24

A Nearly Normal Family

My Demo

Last Call for Istanbul

DOI BOY

Wedding Games

Neon

November 20

Elf

November 21

Trainwreck

November 22

Fargo: Season Five

The Little Rascals

November 23

Navajo Police: Class 57

Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known

Four Brothers

November 24

Chucky: Season 3

The Pope’s Exorcist

Salt

November 25

An Unexpected Christmas

Merry Liddle Christmas Baby

My Christmas Family Tree

The Santa Stakeout

Time For Them To Come Home For Christmas

Christmas Carole

Wonder Park

TVNZ+

November 20

Screw

Ali

Southpaw

November 21

Dictatorland

November 22

Catching a Serial Killer: Sam Little

August: Osage County

Babs

November 23

Utopia

November 25

Country Music Awards Highlights

ThreeNow

November 21

Devil’s Peak: Season One

November 23

Saving the Manor

November 24

Legends of the Lost with Megan Fox

Disney+

November 23

The Naughty Nine

November 26

Doctor Who: The Star Beast

Faraway Downs

Prime Video

November 22

Comedy Island: Japan

November 24

Elf Me

November 26

Polite Society

Apple TV+

N/A

AMC+/Acorn

November 20

Hollington Drive

Shudder

November 20

Sons of Steel

A Dangerous Summer

Hayu

N/A

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