Review: Score: A Hockey Musical
Posted by Katarina Gligorijevic on September 11, 2010 · 1 Comment
It’s very difficult to say this without sounding dismissive of the film, but Score: A Hockey Musical really is as good a realization of the “hockey + musical” concept as I can imagine. The story is simple: gentle, home-schooled teen Farley (Noah Reid) has a natural gift for hockey, but his intellectual hippie parents (Olivia Newton-John and Marc Jordan) don’t want him to participate in organized competitive sports because they’re boorish and violent.
When the owner of a local team (Stephen McHattie at his most hammy and brilliant) spots him in a neighbourhood rink, Farley’s slow seduction to the dark side begins. He joins the Blades, a team run by a tough-as-nails coach (John Pyper-Ferguson, who is quite remarkable in this and also appears in A Night for Dying Tigers, another Canadian feature at TIFF this year), and immediately becomes the most successful rookie ever.
Meanwhile, his next door neighbour and best friend since infancy, Eve (Allie MacDonald) is trying to figure out a way to tell him that she’s fallen in love with him, while helping him navigate the difficult waters of “fitting in with other teenagers”. When Farley’s pacifism gets in the way of his success as a hockey player (because of course, all hockey players must fight, it’s part of the game) he has to choose between his passions, his ideals, the values he’s been raised to believe in and the newfound joys of belonging to a team. Insert a song every five to ten minutes, and voila! You’ve got a musical about hockey.
The dancing is minimal and awkward, but the songs are pretty good in spite of some clunky lyrics (exposition and song structure don’t always go well together). As far as patriotic musicals about sports go, this one is pretty charming, and relative newcomer (he’s actually done a tonne of TV and works regularly for local theatre company, Soulpepper) Noah Reid is really likeable in the role.
Score hits the right notes (forgive the pun) most of the time. Much like director Michael McGowan’s previous feature, One Week, this is unabashedly patriotic and perhaps a little too Canadian to work elsewhere, but its heart is in the right place. George Strombolopolous even makes an amusing appearance as a sportscaster. If you’ve ever wanted to see someone express their love for our national pastime through song and dance, then this film is definitely for you. If the idea of “hockey + musical” doesn’t appeal, then you might find the earnestness with which Score is delivered a bit much. There’s no irony here. Not even when an entire team of macho dudes breaks into a choreographed number.
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