Next Goal Wins review – chillingly eager to please

In Next Goal Wins, Taika Waititi depicts Samoans the same way he depicted Hitler in Jojo Rabbit: as absolutely adorable. It’s based on Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s 2014 documentary of the same name, about minnow football team American Samoa and their Dutch-American coach Thomas Rongen’s quixotic quest to qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup a decade after their infamous 31-0 defeat against Australia.

The Samoans Rongen (Michael Fassbender) meets when he gets off the plane are fey, smiling all the time and fussily apologising for themselves; they’re sweetly overemotional and unfailingly polite. They’re too dumb to know when someone is making fun of them. They’re eager to please. They’re goofy little mascots.
Rongen arrives on the island at rock bottom, inheriting a team whose striker can barely kick a ball without falling over and whose overweight goalie waddles around like The Mighty Ducks’ Goldberg. Taskmaster Rongen whips them into shape through multiple mock-inspirational training montages, but also learns to respect their traditions, particularly regarding the fa’afafine identity of center back Jaiyah Saelua (Kaimana).

The real-life Jaiyah is a still-active player whose uniquely Polynesian third-gender identity highlights the limitations of FIFA’s regulations, and has gone on and off oestrogen around important matches. Though Waititi relishes the opportunity to show off his ally bona fides, giving Rongen an arc in which he first deadnames the player, then asks her what’s going on “down there,” and finally gives her an applause-baiting pregame pep talk that encourages her to hold her own with the boys, the feel-good storyline has the unfortunate effect of confirming the narrative that a trans woman’s place is in the men’s locker room.

In adapting the documentary of the same name, Waititi has taken possession of a turn-key underdog story with readymade moments of triumph, though he keeps his camera very close to the action in the on-field scenes, so he doesn’t have to choreograph very much of it. In general, the film is brightly, flatly lit, with the camera mostly anchored at medium distance and eye level, which speaks both to Waititi’s indifference as a visual stylist as well as to a general we-used-to-make-things-in-this-country decline in industry standards.

The end of the film’s climactic game is narrated after the fact to a character who missed the second half. It’s just a highlight reel, with no building suspense, jumping from climax to climax, each closing an arc for characters we’ve met. It’s described so breathlessly, its events so scarcely believable, that it feels made up to keep our attention. (It’s the barest outline of a real match, with heavy embellishments.) It’s Waititi in microcosm: a filmmaker who, in the moment, will just say or do whatever he thinks will make you feel good. It’s how he controls the encounter. It’s how he holds onto his power.

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