Goon, or: The inept attempt at combining violence and comedy

Goon (2011)

Directed by Michael Dowse

***SPOILERS***

There are two qualities of Goon that work for me. My god…I can’t believe I just wrote that. And I’m also using the word “work” loosely here. Like, the first time I made curry, I followed the instructions, added the curry paste and the spices, let it simmer for an hour...and it just didn’t turn out right. I mean, look! I made curry. It’s right here. It worked. Technically. But it tastes like shit. And that’s Goon in a nutshell—it tastes like shit. It reeks of shit. It’s the most unappetizing dish my senses have been (un)forcibly subjected to in 2012, and possibly much longer than that. And while movies like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance bother me because they go for broke and laughably fall flat on their faces, Goon is one of those rare lazy gems that’s unwilling to strive for anything above mediocrity, never once allowing the comedy nor its violent mindset to build on the characters or develop the themes. On top of it all, the comedy is so inherently unfunny that Goon doesn’t even allow the satisfaction of a chuckle. Are you kidding me? I’m pretty sure Schindler’s List made me fucking chuckle. At least once.

Blatantly, there’s not one joke that’s original, clever or wholeheartedly (or half-heartedly (or quarter-heartedly)) striving to be anything more than “in the moment.” I can sit here all day and write about how Goon isn’t funny, but if you’re gonna find Goon funny, then you’re gonna find Goon funny. I would echo that statement for just about any other film. But not Goon. This is one of the only times I actually have a fucking case. The first five minutes of this “comedy” are a pretty good indication of how much you’ll be laughing throughout Goon, which concurrently serves as an indication of your approximate IQ. Not laughing once puts you in the average-to-below-average range at the very least, with higher IQ’s undeterminable. From there we can determine just how screwed you are it in the real world.

A man pounds on a machine, screaming, "It won't give me my money!."

“That’s because it’s a jukebox,” says Doug, played by the listless and ever-untalented Sean William Scott.

“I bounce,” says Doug, describing the job he loves oh so much.

“Like a basketball?”

Yes, like a basketball. Cue transition! Quick cut to next joke…man, they’re firing like an onslaught of horny frat boys armed with date rape pills. So persistent!

“You make me want to stop sleeping with a bunch of guys,” Eva (Alison Pill) romantically says to Doug, also indicating the amount of effort the screenwriters are attempting to use to give any character a single ounce of depth.

“That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,” says Doug, which coincidentally is the same joke a staff of junior-high playwrights would pen for the school’s Spring play, only to briskly brush it away as, “Come on guys, a little too cliché.”

This annoys me, because I usually save the bold setting for quotes and sentiments that have attack the heart of the movie. Movies like Poetry and The Turin Horse are fucking prime for this tool, stuffed full of memorable quotes that build on the movie's intentions. But, in keeping with consistency, these quotes really do capture the essence of Goon: it’s blatant, senseless and juvenile. While remaining hereditarily unamusing for its pubescent attempt at telling a joke, its lethargy in making its own shitty jokes build on the characters in the slightest bit is appalling. The characters become involved in situations to regurgitate such jokes, instead of the comedy filtering its way through the characters and their actions. Every piece of dialogue is forcibly inserted for anything other than insight, choosing to be insulting as a tool for comedy and vulgar for vulgar’s sake. Which worked for wonderfully for Superbad, a film Goon screenwriter Evan Goldberg coincidentally wrote. But Jonah Hill’s character Seth was never perpetuated as a moral savior. He was funny in his own right, but the comedy actually meant something. By the end of the film, Seth is an utterly pathetic character because he shits on others due to his own social inabilities. Every time he insulted McLovin, you could just feel his self-esteem slipping deeper and deeper.

Which brings me to the first aspect of Goon that “works.” I usually like to attack both a film’s flaws and strengths, but this is an unusually difficult task. Much more challenging than dissecting the mindset of Ryan Gosling's mentally unstable character in Drive. So, for the first item, I really had to reach deep. And I’ll just say it: I liked Jay Baruchel’s character Ryan. Not because I found him funny—in fact, his vulgarity made him quite the opposite in my eyes. He made me never want to say the word “fuck” in front of my mom again, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even care. But, adverse to the entire running time of Goon, Ryan is a go-for-broke character. He doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks of him—including you. It’s refreshing to witness a movie striving for something above ordinary…especially for a film that does anything but.

Ah, but as soon as I build ‘em up, I knock ‘em down. As mentioned earlier, Ryan is unfortunately a dull tool for comedy. Seth is essential to Superbad, thus his actions, whether you find them funny or not, actually serve a purpose, sending him deeper and deeper into melancholy and extracting buried sentiments about growing up and losing his best friend. It represents the line between "funny" and "comedy." Whereas one tool (funny) is subjective, the other (comedy) is an artform with rules and complexities that can shape it into many unique forms. Ryan isn't funny in my eyes, but he's a great character for comedy. If anything, you’d wish Ryan wasn’t so great because he makes it so obvious that Goon is centered on the wrong fucking character. Doug is inherently uninteresting and wildly inconsistent. Ryan sticks out like a sore thumb, instead of weaving himself into this array of characters. His comedic strengths are rendered useless because all they do is offset our own boring character…which brings us to strength #2.

And that’s this: Goon could work. That’s it. That’s what I’ve determined. If in anyone else’s hands, Goon could have legitimately been something great. Violence is ugly, and it’s not hidden in Goon. And combining violence with comedy is a concept that’s full of possibilities. If you can capture the violent mindset of a character while concurrently filtering the comedy through such actions, you’ve got an innately deep idea that can trickle its way through a film and build a character. But…no. Doug’s violent outbursts hold no true or coherent connection. Doug is a robot; he reacts when others tell him to react, never once creating an identity for himself, nor ever building on such a unique trait for a character. But it’s not a representation of some congenital or learned mindset from too many violent movies. It's simply an unsuccessful attempt to mix two brands of cinema. There's comedy; there's violence. There's no attempt to balance or alleviate one with another. And there's nothing wrong with violence—in fact, films like Taxi Driver and Drive are able to capture the darker psychological aspects of violence without making it feel forced. But goddamn if it isn't forced in Goon. Violence isn't interwoven, nor hold any sort of significance regarding the characters. Inept forms of comedy are used, and then inept violence sequences are used. Stripping violence of any sort of meaning or context leaves it right back where it started: ugly. And not an ugly act—an ugly film.

And instead of building an interesting character who reacts with violence when he's told...well, Doug is just ugly. Instead of exploring such a concept, the inept writers of this film feel content in contradicting it in order to get a laugh(?). When a guy starts hitting on Eva at the bar, Doug’s first reaction is to punch the guy. And look! Eva likes it…the rivalry between Doug and Ross Rhea (Liev Schreiber) exists for no reason, only because Doug is the new goon of the league and Rhea is on his way out. Does the violence actually mean anything? No, their feud is completely empty of meaning or substance. The fight may be the highlight of the film, but it also shows why violence exists in Goon. It’s not a tool for comedy. It’s not an attempt to make Doug interesting. It’s not social commentary. Hell, it’s not even used to lighten a situation or darken the mood. It’s there…because it’s there. Because violence can be used in movies. Just like The Fast and the Furious can use car chases. Just like Terms of Endearment can use cancer. Just like the Wayans brothers can dress up as White Chicks. Except Goon’s use of violence is so utterly empty and void of character enhancement that it becomes just another useless prop on set. In retrospect, Goon becomes just that: useless.