Much as I admire select cuts from this duo (Porridge), the film 'Goal' was a piss-poor childlike (in the worst sense) script that revealed how little footie they'd ever watched.
I know viewers tend to suspend belief but this was stretching reality so far that I expected Superman and a talking dog to drop in and visit their old pal - Santiago. It was fantasy of the worst and most feeble kind.
1) The whole film spans ONE MONTH at season's end. A month in which Newcastle have to win all three games. At this moment, it could be EVERY season Newcastle has faced but any footie fan knows there are a lot more than 3 games to play in the closing 4 weeks.
2) During this month, the hero (an unknown from the USA) rises from sacked trialist to reserve player and then scorer of the winning goal in the first team. Oh, and there's no mention of arranging the necessary work permits.
3) In a mid-film exchange the hero says, "One month ago I was heading back home, now I have a contract and a flat." Feeble childish exposition but it hides an even more basic error.
One month? So the three first-team games have been played, right? Wrong! Although the timeline for the film has stretched past the initial month in which the three first-team games have to be won, two of the games are still to be played.
I looked desperately for a Pulp Fiction fractured timeline to explain this dichotomy but I now feared that the only pulp was between the commissioning producer's ears.
3) The writers then throw out the century-old rule: NEVER rely on COINCIDENCE to link or close your plot. While it's allowable to open on a coincidence, such as winning the lottery, it is bad form to use coincidence to hinge or resolve a plot. For an unrelated example, money problems solved, at film climax, by a lottery win.
As the hero is being driven by taxi to the airport after being released, the taxi driver is ordered to pick up the Toon's lead striker after kids have nicked his alloy wheels. It is evident that the striker has never used this taxi service before, through his desperate attempts to persuade the taxi radio operator that he really is the famous striker. During the shared trip, the striker takes the sacked hero under his wing.
Utter BOLLOCKS. How many taxi firms in Newcastle? How many taxis in Newcastle? How many taxis stop to pick up when they have a fare? What if the hero's flight was later? If unpublished screenwriters used a plot hinge like that, the script would be in the bin.
4) For two comedy writers, the gags were very thin - three, maybe. OK, it was a sports movie but please squeeze some humour in. One gag / 30 minutes is woeful.
5) Beckham, Zidane, and Raul are all in the same London nightclub (like they do) despite it being a weekend and that's the day these players play ... in Europe.
6) An afternoon match is played in London. In Los Angeles, the hero's father sneaks off to watch the game in a pub (8 hours difference but you'd never know it) filled with ... NEWCASTLE fans. I'm close to an overdose here.
Coincidence 2 coming up fast. The father and hero have been in dispute since the opening of the film. Days after watching the game, the father dies leaving said conflict unresolved. The hero is devastated that his dad died not seeing him play. When the grandmother and brother decide to go and watch the third match, they choose the SAME pub, filled with the SAME fans, and during casual conversation they learn that the father did actually watch the son play before he died. Hero learns this straight after the match ends, after his 'agent' runs from a top stand seat to the pitch to hand him a phone. It is his grandma telling him his dad had forgiven him.
At this point I reached for the off switch and a vomit bucket, but the writers even denied me the pleasure of terminating the film and supper, because the film chose that precise moment to end.
