2011’s hockey comedy Goon wasn’t groundbreaking, but it was grounded—you could feel the shoosh of skates scraping across ice and smell the funky pads in the locker room. It had a casualness that allowed you to smile even when you weren’t laughing, and a subtle charm that seemed to grow with subsequent cable viewings.
By contrast, Goon: Last Of The Enforcers—written and directed by Jay Baruchel, and available On Demand and on iTunes—is so manic and convoluted that the only thing it reeks of is desperation. Seann William Scott’s winningly inarticulate Doug Glatt has been replaced by a kind of all-purpose randomness dispenser who, in the first scene, says, “One time I had a dream that I was captain of a monkey ship. There were all these monkeys hanging around—dancing, singing, wearing little monkey sailor hats.” It basically kicks out the very foundation of the character—being too uncurious to imagine a life for himself that doesn’t involve beating up other hockey players—in the hopes we’ll laugh at a throwaway monkey joke.
Doug’s BFF, Pat (Baruchel), is also back, complete with the same Masshole accent, a hat that says “FUCK WHITE PEOPLE,” an Africa medallion, and the habit of entering rooms telling people how he was just “dropping meatball loads from my asshole.” Neat? His character—the only major problem with the first Goon—is an incoherent mix of obnoxious things, sort of like the rest of this movie. Last of the Enforcers trades the winning rivalry of doomed anti-heroes for an incoherent storyline involving Anders Cain (played by lost Kings of Leon member Wyatt Russell), who’s meant to be rival, usurper, rich daddy’s boy, reluctant brute, and sadist, all rolled into one.
Most sports movies traffic in clichés. Goon: Last of the Enforcers can’t even decide which ones to use. Give this hockey puck a hard pass.