Score: A Hockey Musical

Farley Gordon, whom I kept confusing with Charlie Gordon from Flower for Algernon, is one of the most skilled hockey player ever to grace the rink. The trouble is that his parents are against team sports and it takes some convincing for him to get on a team. He dazzles everyone with his stick work and constant scoring technique.

Blah...I'm bored typing out the plot to the film already. Score: A Hockey Musical is a poor mix of bad writing and misguided talent. It's a sad attempt at being patriotic and cute. Blending the nation's favourite sport with song and dance numbers is walking a thin ice, to make matters worse the songs and lyrics are terrible. None of the songs are memorable and every single one sounds exactly the same. This is a feature production and it was outdone by a television show about vampires and demons ten years earlier.

Canadian actor Stephen McHattie shows up at the beginning and recruits the young kid. The character is made to seem like he is important and will be involved somewhat later on in the film. Nope, the character almost disappears other than some random appearance here and there for show. Maybe McHattie figured out what kind of film he was in and quickly tried to get out. The inclusion of Nelly Furtado is a joke and was just a way to help get more Canadian funds in the mix. Look everyone, we got a big Canadian singer in our musical, that means Telefilm can feed us more money.

The romance between the two lead characters is weak and uneven. Not once did I ever buy these two would fall in love, let alone were best friends since infancy. Separate, the actors do well enough, together they drown each other out. Bad chemistry leads to a boring and uninteresting film. The conflict on the ice is mostly about fighting and the hesitation that Gordon has to it. The team doesn't have an enemy team, though we are made to believe the first team they play will make some kind of appearance again. The team never seems to loose either, which makes us wonder where is the real conflict? Do I care if the kid doesn't want to fight? You have a hockey film here with no hockey. Where is the excitement? The drama? The thrills? Everything a hockey movie should have, it's missing here. Hockey takes a major backseat to the musical.

The musical numbers, as I stated before are boring, uninteresting and never catchy. Some of the lyrics are vomit worthy," Hockey without fighting is like Kraft Dinner without cheese/ It's still pasta, but the palate it won't please." Uhh.....what? These songs needed to be reworked over again before they made it past the script stage. The final game, is again, an afterthought to the last song of the film. If the film had concentrated a bit more on hockey and added some dramatic elements to it, it would have been a moderate success, instead of an utter failure.

As a Canadian and an aspiring Canadian filmmaker, films like this are not only an embarrassment, but it makes things harder for us. The film is jam packed with Canadian content to help get the funding needed. I get that, but please, make a good film. It all starts at the script stage and this is where the film should have stayed. I can only dream of the film I could have made with my film school colleagues, if I were given a fraction of the budget this had. The film looks great, but it's because of a film like this that we are more known for documentaries . Name some Canadian filmmakers that didn't go over to the states and make a career. Paul Gross is the most notable one, some small fare people like Don McKellar are nice but he is not a house hold name. Paul Gross is even a stretch. If you want to bring some kind of film industry to Canada from the States (which has sucked away most of our talent) then you have to stop making films like this.

This film claims to be a comedy, but it's not funny. It has comedic, dramatic and musical beats...it misses them all. This is a plea to those who produced this film, contact me. This is an open plea, give me a fraction of this budget and I'll give you a better movie. Sorry, but the truth hurts.

Have to say some of the reviews on IMDb for Score: A Hockey Musical surprise me.

The film was not written or directed to be an Oscar winning production. Score: A Hockey Musical is what it sets out to be, an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek, cheesy comedy-musical. There is no need or pretense that the characters need to be more than one dimensional or the plot more robust, as Score is all about FUN!!! And it delivers that in spades.

I saw the film for the first time last night as the closing feature for the 15th Annual Canberra Film Festival. The near capacity audience was in stitches throughout and gave it generous applause at the end.

I never thought anybody could dream up the combination of hockey and musical. Someone did, and Score: A Hockey musical is the result. And it is mostly what you can expect of such an unlikely combination. A cheesy, mildly entertaining string of musical numbers and a story without a trace of suspense.

It was rather amusing to see the on ice choreographed dances, hockey players in full gear normally doesn't do that. Some lyrics were quite good as well. Too much, however, was just cheesy and nothing but tedious clichés.

That the love story couldn't produce a spark to save the movies life was the tipping point though. A fun experiment, but don't expect anyone to try anytime soon again. It just doesn't work out.

Score one for conventional stories...

Telefilm's most recent Great White (Northern) Hype is another "Men With Brooms" (didn't they learn the first time?!). Ultra-contrived to match its funders' ideas of 'quirky', it manages to be a comedy almost entirely lacking any actual humour, with just about the shallowest, one- dimensional characters I've seen outside of third-rate TV shows.

As a Canadian, I would very much like for the films made in our country to be of high quality and worthy of taking pride in. Think of the output in the late 80's through the 90's, when we still funded auteur directors and invested in their development, regardless of how much 'commercial' potential their films had - this is how actual cinematic talents like Guy Maddin, Atom Egoyan, Deepa Mehta, Patricia Rozema, Don McKellar and Bruce MacDonald were able to get their start. Now, we're at a point where people in the industry think they've matured/progressed while they're making and promoting films like this one, which turns out, almost unbelievably, to be just as terrible a film as "The Love Guru". Seriously.

What is it going to take for those who are in a position to make decisions as to funding, etc. to realise that trying to pander to domestic audiences through forced, patronising, on-the- nose attempts at 'Canadian content' is never going to result in a film that is as commercially successful as they hope (not to mention that it's never going to result in anything of any actual cinematic or aesthetic quality)? And anyway, if they're really trying to appeal to some genuine, albeit misguided and juvenile, sense of Canadian patriotism, why make one of the main selling points of your film the casting of Olivia Newton-John?

I've read a lot of reviews of this film out of its debut at TIFF, most of them negative, contrasting the film with the normal festival fare. And comparatively, no it's not an art house film, deeply layered, full of subtext or sparking deep thought later.

I, however, wasn't expecting that. I was expecting a fun, corny musical about our nation's favourite past-time and that's exactly what I got. It's sweet, it made me laugh aloud several times, and I simply had a very good time watching the film.

Noah Reid played the very likable male lead, Farley. He has a pleasant voice, looked natural on the ice, and nothing in his performance felt forced or fake. I hope to see him again. The best word I can think of to describe Allie MacDonald's girl-next-door character of Eve is winsome. I forgot that Stephen McHattie has done comedy before, so his turn as the owner of a pro-hockey team was surprising in how deft it is. Also enjoyable were Farley's coach and teammates, and George Stroumboulopoulos as the rink announcer.

Really, the only weak link in performance was Olivia Newton-John who seemed too stiff for the character that she was portraying. And despite how great they were individually, there wasn't a lot of chemistry between Farley and Eve.

The songs ran about fifty-fifty. Some were catchy and well-orchestrated. Some felt as though they had been written for an amateur musical.

All-in-all, I think the movie gives you exactly what you expect when you go to see a movie called "Score: A Hockey Musical". It's enjoyable, and charming, and I would recommend it to musical and hockey fans alike.