Sports films come in a variety of competitive forms including boxing, hockey, football, bobsled racing, and chess. With each one, the goal is the same: winning. But some of the great tales of competition don’t have winners, they have people who gave it their all and become something larger in the trying. The thing is, though, that folks get so wrapped up in earning the gold that they forget why they started striving for it in the first place. Before athletes join the professional ranks, before they devote themselves fully to the sport in hopes of glory and wealth, they were in it to have fun because winning wasn’t always the aim. Truth is, even when aiming for the win, if you’re not having fun, what’s the point. This is the core of filmmaker Taika Waititi’s (Jojo Rabbit) new film, Next Goal Wins, which is, itself, not just an adaptation of real events, but of a 2014 documentary of the same name. After a wide release in November 2023 and a digital release in January, Waititi’s sports dramedy Next Goal Wins comes home with nearly 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes materials to help explore and explain the significance of the film itself.
L-R: Hilo Pelesasa, Ioane Goodhue, Kaimana, and Beulah Koale in NEXT GOAL WINS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.© 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
In April 2001, American Samoa and Australia faced off in a qualifying match for the World Cup and American Samoa was devastated in a record-breaking 31-0 loss. In the years since, the team would continue that losing streak until 2011. As luck would have it for Football Federation American Samoa (FFAS), Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassender) would be recommended to take over as coach for their team and bring his particular unique skills to the island in hopes of turning around their fortune. What they don’t know is that Rongen has been on a two-year tear through jobs and his stop with FFAS is just another on his own journey to the bottom. Perhaps, however, by learning of a different way to do things, to reconfigure his own view of the past, present, and future, Rongen can repair what’s broken within himself and find a way to help achieve a very simple goal for the team: score just once.
Thought this is a first-time review of Next Goal Wins, in order to explore several of the concepts as they relate to the film’s execution and the bonus features, there will be no refraining from discussing specific spoiler-related details moving forward.
Taika Waititi on the set of NEXT GOAL WINS. Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
In the sole bonus feature “Creating The Pitch of Life,” Waititi explains how he watched the doc, was taken with the story, and decided to tackle a more cinematic version of the true events. This matters in understanding the film as not just another “inspired by true events” film, but one that’s been filtered through a specific lens. This may seem obvious as every writer, actor, director, etc. processes information via their perspective, but it’s exceptionally important in understanding Next Goal Wins before pressing play. Waititi frames the entire film not as a traditional, here’s what happened, but as a story being told to the audience by an unnamed priest played by Waititi himself. We’re told, right from the start, that what we’re being told is true, except for what’s not. This shifts everything that follows from being strictly beholden to history, empowering the film to be looser, free, and silly. It’s easy to forget this in the process of viewing the film, which is why the film does include a post-scene involving said priest. Everything we’re witnessing from beginning to end is little more than myth or legend, in that things did happen and they are catalogued and recorded as happening, but that the details of how it happened may be shifted within the runtime. The central significance of this is that it means that the film, Next Goal Wins, is entirely from the perspective of its Polynesian storytellers. This is not a “white savior” story, even if Fassbender is a central component of the story and plays a figure that the film spends a great deal of time with. The arcs, as they exist, aren’t about absolving him thanks to his island friends, it’s about how he comes to be understood as a person and how the team members come into their own. Each aspect is treated and presented as how it matters through the lens of the American Samoa players, with Fassbender’s take on Rongen shown and used as a contrast. This also empowers Waititi to tell a story that uses a form of humor that’s specific to the Polynesian perspective that might be otherwise ignored if told by someone else. Again, Next Goal Wins is a sports film, but rather than placing the significance on the winning, the lessons within it are spotlighting how playing matters more than the end result. This is a perspective specific to this community and their culture that butts up against other countries and how they measure success.
L-R: Beulah Koale and Oscar Kightley in NEXT GOAL WINS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, using the Polynesian perspective as the overall view of the film (again, established by the priest at the start), enables the film to play with itself regarding execution of structure which helps bring home the point of its message. Up until the qualifying match that the whole film is leading up to, Waititi takes a fairly standard sports comedy approach wherein the characters push and pull each other during the “getting to know you” phase before some kind of equilibrium is made. Impressively, rather than it being about the team raising themselves or about Fassbender’s Rongen lowering his intensity, it’s about both sides meeting in the middle to reach their goal. However, in the second half of the match, the traditional sports film structure is tossed out the window in favor of something more silly and in line with Polynesian/Waititi’s humor, but also something that ties the outcome of the match to the Polynesian team while reducing Rongen’s focus. In this sequence, Oscar Kightley’s (Moana; Hunt for the Wilderpeople) FFAS overseer Tavita is recovering from a medical event when his son Daru (Beulah Koale) comes to tell him how the second half went. It’s meta-upon-meta now as we’re being told a story within another story, yet, by having Daru tell us how the entire second half goes rather than watching it, it removes the tension of “will-they-won’t-they” and focuses it on the players and their experiences on the field. Of course we care about the outcome, but, by this point in the story, how the players get to the end of the game is what matters, making the telling of the story from the perspective of Daru, a method that removes Rongen from the narrative completely, ensures that all we learn is delivered by someone to whom the story matters. Rongen is not a permanent fixture on the island and whether he stays or goes at the end of the film doesn’t matter, what does is whether or not these players get what they seek. All of this to say that Waititi achieves something by using this framing that’s harder to do without it: everything is about the people of American Samoa, sacrificing nothing of who they are even as the narrative requires attention on the outsider.
L-R: Taika Waititi, Michael Fassbender, and Kaimana on the set of NEXT GOAL WINS. Photo by Hilary Bronwyn Gayle. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
If all of this intrigues you, whether you’ve seen the film or not, you’ll find the sole bonus feature, the aforementioned “Creating The Pitch of Life,” a really interesting experience. Not only do we get to hear from Waititi about how he came to learn of the original Mike Brett and Steve Jamison documentary (both of whom serve as producers on this and who are involved in helping the actors understand the details of the sport), we also learn why he wanted to make it himself and the impact that the 2020 lockdown had on the production of the film. That the film is shot in Oahu instead of American Samoa is explored, as well as the significance to each of the cast and crew about having this Polynesian cast. Actor Uli Latukefu (Black Adam), who plays goalie Nicky Salapu, even gets emotional (understandably when you listen to him speak) discussing what it means to him to work with others within his community. This bonus feature covers a lot of ground from pre-production, production, and post-production, each one providing additional insights into why the film matters in the larger sense of movie-making beyond the entertainment value of watching an engaging comedy.
Sitting: David Fane and Michael Fassbender in NEXT GOAL WINS. Photo Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.
Between the strange controversy of Jojo Rabbit (2019) and the reactions to Thor: Love and Thunder (2022), Waititi has become a filmmaker who you either jive with or not. Personally, while some of his comedy delves a little too much into the cringe category for my own taste, I rarely come away from a work of his without some kind of emotional response. The same is true here as Next Goal Wins offers a great reminder that losing doesn’t mean that you can’t win ever or that one needs to feel like a loser because you don’t place or show. Sometimes, the measure of a person, what makes them a winner, is in capturing and curating a passion and pursuing that simply because you can. Sure, sometimes the character portrayal of Rongen is one-note and his arc is executed in a way that doesn’t make logical sense (even if it does cinematically). And, yes, the use of comedy does border on too much, but what works lands well, making the drama equally powerful.
To that end, Next Goal Wins offers viewers a film that plays like comfort food: inviting, enjoyable, and filling. It may not work for everyone, but if you’re in the camp that leans more toward Waititi’s wavelength, Next Goal Wins scores.
Next Goal Wins Special Features*:
- Creating The Pitch of Life — Explore filmmaker Taika Waititi’s loving homage to American Samoa, Polynesian culture, and the sports movie in this delightfully entertaining short-form documentary. See what it took to make a winning movie about the losingest soccer team in the world.
- One (1) Deleted Scene: Priest Blessing the Team
*Bonus features may vary by product and retailer
Available on digital January 16th, 2024.
Available on Disney+ and Hulu February 15th, 2024.
Available on Blu-ray and DVD February 27th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Searchlight Pictures Next Goal Wins webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews, streaming
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