Everybody loves a winner turned loser, especially these days, Taika Waititi. As of late, in his non-“Thor” directorial output, the once-beloved filmmaker has gravitated toward zeroes meekly shuffling around the margins of power. He’s vaunted swagless vampires dissed by alpha-werewolf rivals, the dweebiest li’l squadron the Third Reich ever saw, and with his latest film “Next Goal Wins” — a slight step up from his calamitously precious take on the Holocaust, which has left him with an evident self-destructive impulse to tackle issues bigger than he can handle — he rallies the losingest club in the history of international soccer.
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Based on the documentary of the same name, the American Samoa football team made history in the worst way imaginable when they were bested in a mortifying 31-0 blowout at the cleated feet of the Australians, a national shame that gutted the program for years. Numerically, they’re the biggest underdogs of all time, so piteously terrible that their loftiest fantasy isn’t even a championship but one puny goal. For on-the-skids coach Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender, his calves like hams), the pop-57,000 American Samoa is his Elba, the exile to which he’s remanded once his sideline rage leads to one firing too many. For Waititi, however, it’s a paradise of natural narrative bounties supplying him with everything he needs for another salute to irrepressibly upbeat dinguses.
Sporting Hulk Hogan handlebars and very distracting false teeth, Waititi himself gives a preamble to the true tale of “whoa,” not woe, as the priest presiding over the devoutly Christian island. Most of the jokes are funnier than that one, a welcome return to the snap-into-place sight gags and pretzel-shaped wordplay that got Waititi onto Marvel’s radar in the first place. It’s both a delightful bit and illustrative of the team’s rickety insignificance that the terminally cheerful coach Tavita (Oscar Kightley) must yell “whistle whistle!” in place of the real thing. Despite all the failure, his unfailing optimism drives Thomas up a wall once he’s gotten off the plane and shot his segment for American Samoa’s most popular public-access TV show, an interview series with people getting off the plane. His hard-times beard can’t conceal that he’s not doing so hot, with a carry-on full of liquor nips, an ex-wife (Elisabeth Moss) dating a soccer federation colleague (Will Arnett, replacing cannibalism fetishist Armie Hammer), and a voicemail full of messages from his unseen daughter. He needs a W just as badly as the crew he’s been tasked with whipping into shape.
Waititi tries to preempt the white-savior-story charges with a crack that comes right out to name the trope, though that doesn’t change the fact that for the film’s purposes, the team and their hospitable home exist to better the life of their Dutch-American visitor.
Left undeveloped while we watch Thomas pensively stroll on the beach, the players wouldn’t be discernible as individuals if not for the names on their jerseys, and the only one fleshed out gets Waititi an immediate ejection red card. Secret weapon Jaiyah (the mononymous, non-binary, altogether transfixing Kaimana) initially baffles Thomas with her gender identity of fa’afafine, taken for granted in the Pacific as an important piece of the local cultural heritage. He deadnames her to motivate her during practice. Then, after she knocks him out, she’s sent on the high road of apology to him for a reconciliatory heart-to-heart in which she smiles through an invasive inquiry about her genitals. The movie’s emotional climax uses her transition with a vulgar blatancy of purpose, just so Thomas can give her the pep talk that instantly dissolves her dysphoria.
That ruinous miscalculation throws something of a damper on the excitement of the big game, even as Waititi nimbly jukes away from the sports-movie clichés that force scripts into a boring win-loss binary. As innumerable parents to inept children have hollered from the stands, it’s all about having fun out there and doing your best, a bromide that Thomas gets drilled into him like the ladder runs meant to hone fancy footwork. His trod-flat character arc reflects an overall inching toward the generic in Waititi’s filmmaking techniques, losing touch with the playful spirit of his earlier work. And that drift toward the middle goes for his stale pop-culture references, too; hope you’re familiar with “The Karate Kid,” “The Matrix,” and “The Lion King.”
While the American Samoans give a living testament to the demoralizing effect defeat has on a person, Waititi’s current career phase illustrates the dangers of triumph. The long delays caused by the Fox-Disney merger mean that we’re only now seeing the footage from a shoot wrapped mere months before its director claimed one of the shiniest trophies in Hollywood, and yet he already seemed to be losing touch with his inner loser. He’s since taken the Met Gala by storm, sparked tabloid gossip with an A-list menage a trois, and cashed a second superhero-sized check. Will success spoil Taika Waititi? The answer implied by “Next Goal Wins” isn’t encouraging for the future of an original comic voice still audible but slowly fading into the chorus. [C]
