Next Goal Wins, All of Us Strangers, and Past Lives (The Shame-Free Cinema Club)

A Cinema Column that actively fights to see the lens of TV and film without the Abled Gaze (Part One)

This is what you think it is:  A Cinema Column…

Except it actively fights to see the lens of new media (TV and film) without the Abled Gaze.

Is it the only thing to care about here? No. (Just like being disabled isn’t always the thing that defines us.) But since there is no Bechdel Test for inspo-po movies right now, we need one. The BeWell Test?

“You don’t read?” We ask people with arthritis in their hands. “You don’t have books on tape?” We say to Deaf people without the time or eye-attention for yet another thing. ‘You don’t go to the art museum?” We say to those with fiscal or physical limitations.

Movies and television ARE art… and it’s about time we let us savor it in geeky glory without the popcorn-side of shame.

I know what you’re going to say.

You’re going to say: “That got bad reviews” and HATE me for not hating something everyone else hated (or maybe you also avoid searching for something streaming because you too loved Christopher Guest growing up and don’t want to be told what sophisticated humor is or isn’t?), but if you like scoffing at simple, small sweet films more than “Guff” with them…. You probably will feel the way a lot of critics did.

If you’re like me, however, and vacillate between turning your stand-up off when it doesn’t hit-like-a-Birbiglia in the first 5 minutes, and also wishing more people could take kind-humor (a la the “My Name Is Inigo Montoya Effect”) then you’ll find this in good humor.

I found Next Goal Wins to feel like a throw back to the Cool Runnings or White Men Can’t Jump days of yore (the racial tension very much included, but the presence of Jack Harlow not)- a style of soft-early-90s humor that felt a stark contrast from the flutes and pies soon to follow… Which makes me now realize that most of the comedy I thought was 90s based was actually 80s based, and I was just the unfortunate (or fortunate?) byproduct of a multi-child household.

I know that Taika Waititi is not everyone’s cup of tea, but I much prefer him hand-crafting small films like this joyous sunbathe, or going for our gut with the once-in-a-lifetime mix of humor and horror as in JoJo Rabbit… and wish that big Universes would support him in ideas that feel tender and smaller, like a scrapbook, and not only the giant hammers most would think.

Most Marvel purists will hate me because I found his first Thor to be the first time I felt like I could ‘hang’ in a superhero world that I didn’t know much about, and, maybe most importantly, felt he tried to show the world that Hemsworth is more than just a pretty bicep… even if I think that’s still what most people will continue to typecast him as, rather than a genuine comedic talent who should be tested and pushed.

In this way, I hope the next films that Waititi makes test and push him too. I want his next JoJo, you know (know)? And I think he’s much more Monty Python at the end of the day than anyone in this day and age can easily relate. But if he’s not going to be building something as beautifully child-like and then brutal as ‘the hanging feet’ in JoJo (all I shall say), as well as the Bowie song in German at the end, and the oddities sprinkled between… a movie about and “for” the children who see the world AS a weird quip that many in the world might not prefer, in a sense… than we might as well savor the puns and innocence that feel like someone who isn’t trying too hard.

We lived in a farm house a year ago- my daughters and partner and I- and it was so rural that we had zero-to-no tower service. Our WiFi essentially didn’t work in any way, shape, or form, so if we wanted to to watch anything at all, we would have to pull over to a gas station before we hit the backroads and download something in advance so we could play it “off the books”. The hook, however, is that my daughters learned to live out of a box of old DVD’s and a singular laptop who’s player still worked (mine has been jammed for years), and in doing so, developed the unfortunate (fortunate?) skill of being able to quote Robin Hood Men In Tights almost perfectly. Although that movie “hasn’t aged well” (even if offensive jokes should be off the writer’s table nowadays… Don’t literally ALL movies not age well?), every time they quote it, it makes me miss the era of spoofing Top Gun and feigning hair band documentaries, even IF we could now look at it and say: “That’s not as cerebral as this Mike guy you like so much.”

It’s funny how I somehow miss movies like Wedding Crashers, Anchorman and Dick more and more, and though some comedies push for new ground (noteworthy and needed)… very few push back towards a box of DVD’s in a farm house with no Wifi, with two merry teenage girls often quoting a great many merry men.

Image courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

The BeWell Test:  If you’re okay with getting off your high horse (perhaps only the invisible kind like from Branagh’s Much Ado?), then you will love this quaint underdog ‘smile’. In terms of the able-fable-gaze, however, this one has its fair share of expected jokes when comparing it to the genres I previously mentioned (the type you know are silly, but if the movie came on TV one day in the future, you would find yourself laughing along again and not reaching for the remote).

Clearly, I miss just crashing a wedding, riding an invisible pony, and recognizing that real life people (especially coaches) aren’t the whole heart of a story that should stay focused on the team.

The film highlighted a variety of body types being able to succeed in a sport that only shows one type thriving (hint: it generally bends like Beckham). The transphobic joke that hit hard at the beginning did what I (believe) was intended, though I am just guessing: It hit so hard that we all winced and retracted… which is why the story felt… well, human.

Given the time that this story truly took place (and maybe I should add that my Dad knew the real life coach that this was based on), I imagined a man of my Dad’s era not only living then, but watching this film now: and hoped more ‘white guys who can’t jump’ will see themselves in the barbwires thrown, and realize it’s much uglier than they think. [Not trying to directly include my Dad or anyone in the intentional misgendering or misnaming of anyone, but time period and context are how every story finds its growth]

Though I don’t know the exact goal (pun?), and perhaps my taste this time is just sh*t… I still believe that some people need humor with their horror…

Even if we can’t all like the same cup of Waititea.