GOAL! THE DREAM BEGINS - DVD review

Question: How many inspirational, sports-oriented movies do people need to see in a lifetime? Maybe the answer depends on the sport. If it's miniature golf, the answer is probably none. If it's something as popular as international football (governed by FIFA, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association), known in the U.S. as soccer, the answer is probably never enough. So, we get Touchstone Picture's 2005 soccer story, "Goal! The Dream Begins."

One of the DVD's accompanying featurettes tells us that soccer is the most-popular sport in the world, the numbers in attendance at worldwide soccer matches dwarfing the number of people attending America's Super Bowl. In the U.S., however, soccer is just catching on and has a ways to go to match the popularity of American football. That may explain why the film did not do as well at the box office in the U.S. as the producers might have hoped. Still, it's a winning film, formulaic, to be sure, but rather touching, too. Personally, I have no interest in soccer; but just as I have no interest in golf, either, but enjoyed "The Greatest Game Ever Played," I rather liked "Goal!" Just don't expect too much out of it that you couldn't guess going in.

The movie is a typical rags-to-riches Cinderella story about a poor boy making good in the world of sports. Yes, it is inspirational, but I'm not entirely sure it's in the best interests of youngsters because it could give them false hopes. Teaching high school for so many years as I did, I can't tell you how many failing students told me it was OK for them to flunk out of school because they were going to be basketball stars when they grew up. So, remember, this is only a movie, a one-in-a-million story, a fairy tale if you will.

The plot concerns a poor, young illegal immigrant, Santiago Muniz (Kuno Becker), who lives in a low-income barrio of Los Angeles. During the day he works with his dad gardening, at night he works as a busboy in a Chinese restaurant, and in-between times he plays soccer. He's so poor he wears shin pads made from cardboard boxes. But he has a dream to become a professional soccer player (well, what kid doesn't?), and he has a gift for the game.

While there is almost nothing about the story we haven't seen before, it does have a sweet spirit, and the sports sequences are quite exciting and well staged. As we might expect, Santiago gets no support from his father, who thinks his son's ambition to become a professional athlete is stupid and worthless. The father believes that hard work trumps idle dreams any day, and, yes, he has a point.

Then a former British soccer scout, Glen Foy (Stephan Dillane), spots Santiago playing in a minor-league match, and the young man impresses him. Foy is impressed enough to invite Santiago to try out for Newcastle United, a big-time British club. But Santiago has to pay his own way to England, so just getting there is half the problem.

The film's director, Danny Cannon ("I Still Know What You Did Last Summer," "Judge Dredd," "The Young Americans"), tells us in a commentary that in order for a sports film to be successful, the main character has to have heart. This is what Kuno Becker delivers; he's confident and charismatic. Indeed, without Becker in the lead role, I'm not sure anything else in the story would have worked. The fact is, apart from Becker and the game sequences, which the film does up with verve, there isn't much else to recommend it. The dramatic moments are all rather hackneyed, the coincidences mount up rather quickly, and the outright melodrama gets heavy-handed rather fast. It's a little like piling on, particularly the inevitable love interest (Anna Friel) and the inevitable partying with the team's superstar (Alessandro Nivola).

Every vicissitude imaginable befalls poor Santiago as his saga gets worse before it gets better. Then it gets worse again and better and worse yet again before ending in the triumph we know is coming. "Goal!" is no "Rocky" because we never actually come as close to the main character as in that older film, but it has the basic "Rocky" style down pat. Santiago's tale seems highly unlikely, especially as it unfolds in so short a time, compressed as it is for a motion picture, but I suppose after real-life stories like "The Rookie" and "Invincible," anything is possible.

"Goal! The Dream Begins" begins as a stereotypical sob story but turns out to be entirely uplifting, just as advertised. Santiago overcomes the odds and the hardships through the sheer power of will; and the big, splashy, telescoped ending really does make one feel good. This film will not go down in the record books as one of the great sports flicks of all time, but it's not the worst, either.

Video:
The video engineers maintain most of the movie's 2.40:1 theatrical aspect ratio in anamorphic dimensions that measure about 2.20:1 across my television. They also keep pretty close, I'm sure, to what was probably in the original print in terms of unusual color schemes and such, with hues a bit too deep and rich at times. Sometimes the director drenches scenes in various color tones, like the golden glow he provides so often, perhaps to suggest the story's fairy-tale quality. Nighttime shots look better than daylight shots for some reason, with good detailing even in darker areas of the screen. Although overall definition could have been better, with object delineation occasionally a tad soft, rough, or blurred, grain, moiré effects, haloing, and other such ill effects are largely a nonissue.

Audio:
The audio engineers capture the sound of the moment pretty well in Dolby Digital 5.1 playback. The first thing one notices is the very deep bass, maybe a little too deep and too robust not to call attention to itself. But then one notices a fine ambient bloom to the musical soundtrack, to voices, and to crowd noises that is most welcome. The engineers use the surround channels to realistic effect, too, while at the same time rendering dialogue clearly and cleanly (even if they anchor the speech in the center speaker as in most new movies).

Extras:
There is a fair group of bonus items on the disc, none of them very long or involved but enough to engage one's interest. The first is the obligatory audio commentary by the filmmakers, this one with director Danny Cannon and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. The next item is a six-minute featurette, "The Beautiful Game," that tries to give us some idea of the importance of football in the state of the world; the game is described as more important "than life or death." After that is a ten-minute featurette, "Behind the Pitch," that takes us behind the scenes of the filmmaking. Then, there's a three-minute music video, Happy Monday's "Playground Superstar," followed by a final, three-minutes featurette of highlights from the world of real-life soccer, "Golden Moments of the FIFA World Cup."

The extras conclude with twenty scene selections and a chapter insert; Sneak Peeks at six other Buena Vista releases; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired.

Parting Thoughts:
"Miracle"? "Remember the Titans"? No, "Goal! The Dream Begins" will probably not go down in the annals of popular sports films the way those movies have, but much of "Goal!" is engaging and fun to watch, thanks mainly to Kuno Becker in the title role (he's such a nice kid, we can't help but root for him), and the well-photographed soccer matches. The rest of the characters and plot might have been phoned in, so you won't want to get your hopes up too high in those areas; just concentrate on the best the film has to offer.