Score: A Hockey Musical
(2010)
Director: Michael McGowan
Cast: Noah Reid, Olivia Newton-John, Allie MacDonald
Over the
years, I have certainly found out a lot about how Hollywood works, and
how it has evolved over the years. For example, I have learned that
with costs soaring for film production, studio heads nowadays are very
reluctant to invest in the making of movies that seem riskier than
average. Compare that with decades earlier, when filmmaking was a lot
cheaper and therefore studio heads could take a lot more risks. I will
admit that if I were a studio head, and realizing that it was my money
that I was spending and my job on the line, I would probably be
reluctant to take risks. For example, there is the genre of animation -
specifically being animation that has been aimed at a more mature
audience. While audiences are comfortable going to see animated movies
aimed at a family audience, box office flops like Final Fantasy
and Titan A.E.
show adults generally think that animation is kids' stuff. The
documentary genre is another pitfall. With rare exceptions like Michael
Moore efforts, audiences show little enthusiasm about seeing such
movies, at least on the big screen. Foreign films, and films about
another country's history, are also a tough sell to the American
public. All the same, I have realized there are some genres that
nowadays are not being tapped to their full potential. For example, the
western. The common "wisdom" going around Hollywood is that westerns
don't sell anymore. However, if you look at the westerns made for the
past thirty years or so, you will see that almost all the westerns that
have been good and received decent
distribution have done decent to excellent business at the box office.
But getting back to discussing film genres that I may
love watching but realize they are a tough sell to the genre public, I
would like to discuss in more depth one particular film genre that's
become all but extinct on the silver screen. And that is the musical.
Musicals have become so rare in recent decades that I haven't had a lot
of opportunity to review any for this web site. Nowadays, it seems
practically the only musicals that get made are those that happen to be
animated movies for the family. Clearly, the classical kind of musical
that got made in the Golden Age of Hollywood has lost favor with the
mainstream public, one reason being that the style of music that is on
the Billboard Top 40 chart is much different than the music found in
classic musicals like Singin' In The Rain.
But I think the near extinction of the musical is also due to the fact
that I mentioned in the first paragraph, with movies becoming more
expensive than ever. Even in the Golden Age, musicals cost quite a bit
of money to produce. Another factor is that the studio system that
existed back then does not exist now, and makes it much harder to make
a musical. In the Golden Age, you have contracted song composers,
choreographers, and other key people easily at your disposal to help
design the musical numbers. Also, you had on hand contracted actors and
actresses you could easily choose from and force to star in your
musical. And you could force them to go through singing and dancing
lessons for months in order to prepare them. Today, the studio system
no longer exists, so you don't have all those people at your disposal.
And trying to hire an actor to go through all that training to pull off
musical numbers would be difficult, because time is a lot more valuable
today than it was all those decades ago.
So you can see why musicals are rare in this day and
age. And there are certain kinds of musicals that are even rarer. One
of them happens to be Canadian musical films. It's pretty easy to
figure out why there have been so few Canadian musicals made - high
costs, and the Canadian public
generally not liking Canadian films. But
a few have been made, Score: A Hockey Musical
being one of them. The story behind the movie is kind of interesting -
it was a rare attempt to make a mainstream Canadian movie, and was one
of the few Canadian movies to get a theatrical release as wide as a
Hollywood movie in Canada. But Canadians indicated by the incredibly
pathetic box
office take that they weren't buying it, and the movie was gone from
most theaters after just two weeks. When the movie got released on DVD,
the distributor not only pulled the "A Hockey Musical"
part of the title off the front cover, they failed to mention anywhere
on the DVD case the fact that the movie was a musical, save for saying
that among the disc's special features, there was an optional
"sing-a-long" track. So I knew I had to see if the movie was as big an
embarrassment as the distributor seemed to think it was. The central
figure of the movie is a seventeen year-old by the name of Farley
(Reid). Although he lives in the major metropolis of Toronto, he lives
a very sheltered life with his hippie-like parents Edgar (Marc Jordan)
and Hope (Newton-John, Grease), who
home school him. About the only contacts he has with the outside world
are Eve (MacDonald, Stories We Tell),
who has been his next door best friend since childhood, and his passion
for playing hockey with other amateur players in the neighborhood. As
it turns out, Farley is so sheltered he does not seem to realize that
not only Eve wants to be more than just a friend, but that he's a
natural at hockey. But the latter changes one day when junior league
hockey team owner Walter (Stephen McHattie, Beverly Hills Cop III)
spots Farley playing. Walter quickly signs Farley up, and it soon seems
that Farley is on his way to fame and fortune. But Farley soon learns
that, among other undesirable things, league hockey demands the players
get rough at times and that fame can bring some hardships as well - one
of them being that it may result in Farley losing Eve to another guy.
When
the opportunity to watch a movie musical comes my
way, more often than not I first do research on the movie before
deciding whether or not to watch it. And when I do research, there is
one specific thing I am most interested to know about the musical. It's
probably the same thing you are most interesting in knowing when a
movie musical falls into your lap. And that is the movie's musical
numbers. Are the songs good? And what about the choreography, if any?
I'll start with answering the latter question. If you are looking for
amazing and elaborate dancing, you'd better look elsewhere. Almost all
of the musical numbers are done with the performers standing in one
place as they belt out the songs. The few times (three or four
instances in total) when there is some significant movement, while the
choreography isn't terrible, it comes across as quite small scale, both
with the unelaborate dancing to the short time each dance is in length.
It feels like it was conceived and practiced for only an hour before
the camera started rolling. Though while the movie's choreography is
disappointing on more than one level, it's a masterpiece compared to
the movie's songs. The best way to critique them is just to list a
sample of the lyrics. The opening song Darryl vs. The Kid has one
character spout out: "Are we supposed
to believe that baloney / You'd be lucky to drive a Zamboni". A
short time later, when Farley and Eve are singing the song Best Friends, he sings: "When I was five I threw up on her colony
of ants," to which she responds with: "Farley once made me laugh so hard that I
peed my pants". Further into the movie, a doubting hockey coach
(John Pyper Ferguson, Drive) tells
the naive Farley via song after his first practice game: "Hallmark
I'm sure would be so proud / To hear you voice those sentiments out
loud / But a well placed fart would knock you down / If The Moose meant
harm you'd be in a hospital gown".
The worst and most embarrassing song in the movie is a
number called - get this - Kraft
Dinner (ooh, how Canadian!), where the singer somehow hides his
humiliation when he sings, "Hockey
without fighting / Is like Kraft Dinner without cheese / It's still
pasta / But the palate it won't please". As you can see from
these samples, the lyrics to the songs in Score: A Hockey Musical
are downright terrible, being among other things awkward and sounding
stupid. But there are additional problems with these songs. One big
problem is all the songs sound the same, with the same basic kind of
music used throughout. Another problem is that none of the cast members
seems to have the ability to sing. Except maybe Olivia Newton-John,
though to be honest I thought she sounded a little hoarse and aged the
few times she got to sing. My theory is that she was probably arguing
long and hard behind the scenes with the filmmakers about her weakly
written role. She and her co-star Jordan play the hippie-like parents,
but they come across as caricatures. There's no explaining why they
feel their son should be raised in a sheltered environment, and
certainly no explanation why they abruptly change their way of thinking
later in the movie. The other characters in the movie are also
pathetically written. The love interest Eve has had a crush on Farley
for ages, but not once does the movie explain why she has a romantic
interest with the doofus for so long. "Doofus" is really the best way
to describe the character of Farley. He has been written to be so
innocent, so uncorrupted by society even as he approaches adulthood
that you just want to whip out your hand and give him a smack in the
face to wake him up to the hard facts of life.
I think another reason that feeling or rage filled me
was with Noah Reid's performance in the role. He shows talent, but in
this role he plays dumb too
well, forgetting to show a side that is sympathetic and/or relatable.
Though I think the blame for this has to fall on writer/director
Michael McGowan (Still
Mine)
for not steering him straight. Actually, just about all of the blame
for the movie rests on McGowan's shoulders. The bad writing for the
movie doesn't just extend to the songs and the characters. The story
for this movie proceeds in a very slow and drawn out fashion. That's
because the story, with its limited story elements, seems straight out
of a sitcom fashioned for a thirty minute time slot. But even had Score
been cut down, the script would have still suffered from stuff like
tired and unfunny humor (like when a little kid tells an adult to screw
himself) and a very familiar basic story. As for McGowan's directing,
it's a notch or two above his writing. Despite working with a typically
limited Canadian film budget, he does make the movie look okay in some
aspects, from providing convincing hockey uniforms to the players to
enough background extras during any of the many games. Curiously,
though, McGowan photographs the entire movie in dark and dreary colors.
I don't know about you, but if I were trying to make an upbeat musical,
I would be working hard to have the colors pop out of the screen to add
to the feeling of life and joy I would be trying my musical to have. As
it is, the cold look of the movie is frankly depressing, and it would
be hard to have any fun with the movie even if the other parts had been
better. But try telling that to the people who made this movie. After
the movie bombed in theaters, I remember reading a newspaper article
where one of these key people (I forget exactly who) behind the movie
admitting that he was "devastated" by the box office flop. He went on
to state his theory for the movie's poor performance, which was that
maybe hockey fans did not want to see a musical and musical fans did
not want to see hockey. That may have some truth, but if you ask me, I
think a more precise explanation was that Canadians did not want to see
a dumb idea executed in a bad manner.
(Posted May 4, 2020)
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Cinderella, Foolproof, Hot Summer
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