Metegol

I loved this movie... excellent animation... funny story... A great movie for soccer fans. You should not loose the opportunity to watch it. It has excellent quality animation (like Disney / Pixar), but with Latino humor. A lover of Futbolín has a big challenge, and has to do it for real to defend his hometown. A movie that has become the best selling tickets movie in Argentina. Directed by a Oscar winner "Juan Jose Campanella". PRODUCTION NOTES Metegol (Foosball). Argentina/ Spain, 2013. Written by: Juan José Campanella, Eduardo Scacheri and Gastón Gorali, based on Roberto Fontanarrosa's short story Memorias de un wing derecho. Directed by: Juan José Campanella. Voiceovers: Horacio Fontova, Pablo Rago, Fabian Gianola, Diego Ramos. Opening on 258 screens in Argentina on 35mm prints, 3D digital and 2D digital. Distributed by: UIP. NR. Running time: 100 minutes.

It was an amazing experience I didn't surpass in years. This great film is not perfect but it is brilliantly made, incredibly animated and brings a lot of fun in every single minute. The story is a simple one, we watched in lot of movies before. But it touches you in the heart, as it does every time you see common, weak people fight to the powerful ones, just armed with passion, dedication and deliver; the kind of sensations you feel in Rocky I, Real Steel, The Boxer or much other films. Besides, it is equipped with small, funny references here and there, as the Major flying out in a helicopter, like in the 2001 Argentinean crisis. If you liked Cars, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, etc you cannot lose this masterpiece.

In a small town, the local pub is everyone's meeting point and for a young boy the plastic football game is his whole world. As with all boys, he had to deal with bullies and in a heated exchange he defeated the town's bully who swore to avenge this.

With the passing of time, the town's bully became rich and famous but the bitterness never subsided so he plans to take over this little town and destroy the pub in which he as defeated by what he considered a nobody. The boy who defeated him, is not prepared to sit and take it but will fight to the end to protect his home town.

On the whole, the story had cracks and was uninteresting so one ought not expect lots of excitement. The only compensation came from the good animation with a sense of seeing the world through the eyes of a young idealistic person.

(No spoilers ahead)

Kids who watch violent movies will enjoy this. It has a few original ideas that can be entertaining for adults as well. However, the interactions between characters are very much put-down based and some other interactions are borderline for what I'd like my kids to see. A pretty disturbing scene is how the bad guy treats the female interest or another scene where rats are introduced as a menacing creature. There were some lovely efforts to create a structured flowing story with some points of emphasis about friendship and sportsman-like behavior. In short, production value is wonderful and if your kids watch ninja turtle style stuff, I'm sure they'd love this one. 8/10 for those kids. 6/10 for everyone else.

I think that Metegol is great. It is the first time (along with The Secret in their Eyes) that I go to see an Argentinian movie because it is actually really good, and not because it's only Argentinian. Campanella surely knows how to capture or, in this case, produce moments of excitement and humor very efficiently. It is true also that the plot is really naive, but that's not the point. The point is that for the first time Argentina puts its name right there with mega blockbusters like Despicable Me 2 (EXCELLENT Movie, by the way) or any Disney productions. Like I say on the title, I believe that this is the first step to prove that it is possible to do things really well and really competitive. Campanella needs to keep pushing this forward, and he needs to be replenished of creativity by the newer generations of filmmakers. There are only 2 things that I will criticize about this film, and please let these be taken constructively: -Like I said before, the plot is really naive. Not because it's a movie aimed to a kid audience, has to have a kids plot. -The voice acting should be improved. In Metegol, they aimed to have "recognizable faces" for the roles, but they had no experience in voice acting. Pablo Rago, el Negro Fontova and Coco Sily are OK, but I think that Diego Ramos should have put more emotion into his performance. Basically as an audience you kept disassociating the character from its voice, and that CAN't happen.

Well, that's it, if you still didn't watch it, go watch it. It is a great first step in what I believe will be the first of many great Argentinian productions. To all the production and artistic team of this film, chapeau.