Sports are truly the last colossus left in our pop culture landscape. It’s a holdover from when video did away with the radio star and everyone gathered around to have the monoculture laid out before us. Goat is an animated feature that reminds older viewers what the thrill of having that first team to root for as a collective was like. In the same breath, Goat also gives kids one of their first introductions to how thrilling the life of sports fandom can be at its highest and lowest.
Goat stars Caleb McLaughlin as Will Harris, a “small” literal goat who dreams of balling on the biggest stage alongside his heroes. In all the marketing for Goat, the tagline, smalls can ball can be heard, echoed as a kind of rallying cry for underdogs everywhere. It’s to the animated film’s credit that the soaring positivity will likely take hold of even jaded grown-ups who have seen their team, club, and favorite athlete come up a little short when the final horn sounds.
No matter what, how you play matters almost as much as the act of winning itself in Goat. It’s an animated world from Sony Pictures that reimagines the animal kingdom as the logical endpoint of 2k Sports’ wildly popular basketball video game franchise and something akin to global streetball culture represented by different biomes. All these diverse parts come together to make the game we all love, and Goat never really forgets that.
Goat lets us believe “smalls can ball”
Co-Directors Tyree Dillihay and Adam Rosette craft a story reinforcing the underdog nature of their protagonist at every turn. Will Harris is always rendered as a small in a tall world. Goats aren’t the smallest thing in the animal kingdom. But, they aren’t on the same court as Rhinos, bears, horses and large reptiles in terms of size. The digital work to make Goat’s sprawling world feel enormous does not go unnoticed. The camera has the kinetic work of 8,000 dutiful TikTok editors crafting the most viral moments on a basketball court.
The social media highlights of games, especially in the NBA, runs deep in Goat. Roarball, Will’s sports obsession, is basically the world’s premiere basketball league with the serial numbers scrawled over in sharpie. But, that doesn’t hurt Goat at all, in fact, leaning into the basketball subculture around the sport’s most influential stars is used to great effect here.
Coming out of the critics’ screening of Goat was to trade reference points and visual gags from the last 40+ years of the National Basketball Association. There are Allen Iverson step-overs and Matt Barnes appreciation threads brewing for the most casual fans and seasoned ball-knowers all over the movie’s runtime. Dillihay and Rosette need to be commended for stuffing so much NBA fan trivia into the 100 minute runtime.
How Goat actually manages to capture the good and the bad of the sports fan experience
So, one thing that powers Goat is Will’s connection to his hometown, Vineland. It’s not the most glamorous of the chosen cities featured in the story. Yes, it’s lush and inventive with how it sets up the architecture. It’s also funny that parts of Vineland are clearly based on producer and NBA Champion Stephen Curry’s Bay Area ties. Whenever Will is walking up the bridge to his old job at a diner, it’s hard not to look for the Golden Gate bridge in the background.
But, things have been rough in Vineland. When we meet Will, he’s basically living in a storage unit. His little job isn’t paying him enough to live there. So much so, that he has to pawn off his prized possession, Jett Filmore’s Under Armour sneakers. (Product placement is part of the game folks, this is professional sports at its most honest.) Throughout all of these trials and tribulations, he still has his favorite team, The Thorns.
It’s hard not to smile when Will rocks up at the diner and basically everyone’s a lifelong Vineland Thorns fan. If you’re an older viewer, the way they carry themselves will pull at the nostalgia strings in your heart. Every pan over to the folks who haunt these booths day after day and gather to watch the Thorns get their tails kicked feels frighteningly familiar. But, they show up regardless. Waiting For Next Year extends across all fanbases from time to time.
Goat’s lasting message
Everyone can be a fan. When things are good, when things are bad, when you’re just happy the team is watchable. It all registers. You don’t have to be an All-Star to feel uplifted by community. That’s what makes this movie work so well. Yes, you’ve got Gabrielle Union as instant icon Jett Fillmore and Aaron Pierre extending his animal kingdom work as Will’s biggest antagonist Mane Attraction.
But, the game is the game. Whether roarball is being played on crackling tundra or with shifting magma underfoot. The love we all have for the sport is what matters at the end of the day. We might like the shoes, the tunnel walk entrances and the viral moments. But, seeing another person in the same jersey as you reminds us that we’re all pulling in one direction.
For a younger viewer, this is nothing short of revelatory. For us older folks, it reminds us why we push through the lean periods of being a fan. If your smalls love basketball, they’re going to love Goat. But, don’t be surprised if the veterans on your squad don’t leave the theater smiling too! Sometimes a movie can be about more than basketball, and I can say that Goat had the confidence to take off from the free throw line. The confidence to put its heart on its sleeve makes it work. And, that is what we come to both sports and the movies for at the end of the day.
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