Quick synopsis: Football (the foot-to-ball kind, not the hand kind) coach Thomas Rongen has been given the job of coach of the American Samoan national team with one task; to score a goal.

The best thing this film has going for it is it’s likeable. Next Goal Wins (or NGW, pronounced Noog-wah) has an inherent cosiness and warmth that makes it very easy for the audience to not want to turn away. It has the air of a comfortable end-of-year movie you watch with everybody; a bit like Cool Runnings, it all feels very Disney, in a good way. But much like a ska song about the holocaust, that lightness is hiding something very dark. Underneath the tale of the worst football team in the world lies a story about national pride, parental grief, transphobia, and personal belief. But those topics are woven so intricately that you don’t even realise they’re breaking your heart until they pile up. Mostly, the subplot about parental grief plays its hand too easily, it’s trying to give you a peak behind the curtain but instead pulls the curtain wide open, the hints just aren’t subtle enough to hide the reveal. I am very glad that that wasn’t invented for the movie though. His daughter genuinely did pass away in a car crash, and it was her hat he was wearing during American Samoa’s match against Tonga. That’s the kind of thing which if it was invented for the film, would have come off as weird and unrealistic. Related to that, there are quite a few moments which if they weren’t real (and if the film didn’t come from someone with ties to the area) would come off as incredibly condescending. Even the whole premise of the film, that these natives were hopeless until they were “saved” by a white man, comes off as a little strange in the current climate, by “current climate”, I mean “past the 1970s” (which didn’t reach some parts of the Midlands until 1998).

This isn’t an essential watch, but it is very good. It’s not going to change the world, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to. It’s supposed to just entertain you, and tell a really unique story. The American Samoan team’s loss to Australia was huge, literally, it was 31-0. NGW does do a great job of pointing out that the American Samoan goalkeeper actually had a fantastic game, and if it wasn’t for him the score would have been a lot worse. The rest of the players don’t come off with quite as much dignity. But even when the film portrays the players as not being that good, it never dehumanises them. The joke is purely on the observer, not the person being observed. This is the difference between something like Next Goal Wins, and The Gods Must Be Crazy. You don’t come out of this pitying the people you’ve just watched. But you also don’t come out with some condescending thoughts of “Ah, but they’re the real smart ones”, you come out realising that they’re just people with ambitions, hopes, dreams, and moments of stupidity.

It’s not perfect. We could stand to be given a bit more background into his coaching career. We don’t really get a sense of what level he was at in his career. So we’re not given any indication of how big his “fall from grace” is. Was it a huge scandal? Was he not known by anybody? We don’t know, and it kind of harms his character not knowing. Fassbender does do a great job portraying him, though. Due to the nationality and race of the cast, it’s not exactly going to be full of performers you’re familiar with. The only one I recognised was Talia’uli Latukefu from Young Rock, but there are so many performers from this who I want to see again. They’re helped by a really fun script that knows that it’s ridiculous. I mean, it’s a sports movie where the end result isn’t to win the tournament or beat their rival, it’s to score a single goal. Delightfully unique, and I look forward to watching it again.