In this inane sequel to Michael Dowse’s 2011 Canadian sports comedy Goon, Seann William Scott returns as Doug Glatt. An ice hockey hero, captain of the Halifax Highlanders and “a huge, Jewish freight train”, Glatt is good natured and more than a little slow. When he gets his face pounded in on the ice by blond-haired baddie Anders Cain (Wyatt Russell), he hangs up his skates and takes early retirement. He tries his luck with a new job in the basement office of an insurance company (“Doug Glatt – storage room. That’s you!”), while pregnant wife, Eva (Alison Pill, doing her best but not showing her range), tries to keep his spirits up, but it’s not long before he’s sneaking back to the rink.
Directed and co-written by Jay Baruchel (one of the stars of the little-seen American TV drama Undeclared and the voice of How to Train Your Dragon’s Hiccup), Goon’s puerile jokes won’t be to everyone’s tastes, though fans of North American gross-out comedies (and of jocks punching one another) may have fun spotting the scene’s stalwarts as supporting characters, among them Elisha Cuthbert and Liev Schreiber.
Baruchel, too, has written himself a small but shouty role as Pat, an irritating, foul-mouthed nerd who wears a string vest and a baseball cap that says “Fuck white people” (he’s better behind the camera than he is in front of it, which isn’t saying much).
