In an attempt to “drop the gloves” on Slap Shot, Canadian actor Jay Baruchel (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, How to Train Your Dragon) has, along with fellow Canuck Evan Goldberg (The Pineapple Express, Superbad) adapted the book Goon: The True Story of an Unlikely Journey into Minor League Hockey into a feature film.
Goon stars Sean William Scott as a very nice but unintelligent man who is an embarrassment to his accomplished family.
While attending a minor league hockey game, he gets into a fight with a hockey thug who climbs into the stands. After knocking the thug out with a head butt, the local coach offers him a job as an enforcer—the fact that he does not know how to skate is only a technicality.
Baruchel also stars, as well as Alison Pill (Midnight in Paris, Milk), Eugene Levy and one of my favourite Canadian character actors Kim Coates (Resident Evil: Afterlife, TV’s Sons of Anarchy). Seemingly the only other non-Canadian in the cast (other than Scott) is Liev Schreiber (Salt, Wolverine), who did live in Canada for a short time when he was a child.
Goon is not to be confused with Gone, a new thriller starring Amanda Seyfried as a woman whose sister disappears and is convinced that the same man who kidnapped her a year earlier is responsible. As she chases him, the police are chasing her.
The most unique new opening this week is Act of Valor. While it seems like a straight forward action movie about a Navy SEAL squad on a covert operation to rescue a kidnapped CIA officer and take down terrorists who aim to strike America, what makes it unique is that the filmmakers used actual Navy SEALs during filming.
After directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh filmed a video for the U.S. Navy, they conceived an idea for a modern day action movie about the SEALs. Originally, they were going to use the elite force as advisors, but they realized that no actors could realistically portray them on film so they were allowed to use actual SEALs for filming.
The end result is an independent film that reportedly now holds the record for the highest amount of money paid by a distributor for a finished film with an unknown cast.
Paul Rudd re-teams with his Role Models director for Wanderlust, also starring Jennifer Aniston. Rudd and Aniston play George and Linda, an overextended, stressed out Manhattan couple. When George loses his job, they find themselves having to move in with his awful brother in Atlanta. On the way there, they stumble upon Elysium, an idyllic community populated by colourful characters who offer the couple another option at a fresh start.
However, when the lifestyle is money, career and even clothing optional, the change in perspective may cause more problems than it solves. Produced by Rudd and Judd Apatow (Bridesmaids, Knocked Up), Wanderlust also stars Malin Akerman, Justin Theroux and Alan Alda.
