Soccer Dog: European Cup

I have never seen a more stereotypical movie towards Scottish people in my life.

Firstly the "attempted" accents put on by the cast members is atrocious. Why make a movie set in Scotland and not have a single Scottish actor? Why is everyone wearing kilts? No one in Scotland wears kilts! unless at weddings etc NOT TO FOOTBALL GAMES!! And also there isn't a guy going around selling haggis... we do eat normal food BTW!! And even at that the HAGGIS! What the woman was eating looked nothing like haggis.. more like some kind of mashed potato goop. I think the director should try to know a little about something before involving it in the movie, instead of just assuming what a typical Scottish person looks or sounds like or the food they eat.

Finally I am confused to the name of the movie.. Why is it European Cup? Europe is a big place... would it not make more sense to call it Scottish? And cup? I didn't see any cup. I saw a poorly constructed game of football with a referee very biased towards the "good guys" ( i mean did you not see the guy head butt the other one? a sure red card and 5 match ban no? or do you Americans play the game differently?).

I'm not even going to start on the dog.

Directed by Sandy Tung (??), written by John E. Deaver who may or may not be a gynecologist in Richmond NY and starring Cockney geezer Nick Moran, what could be described as a steaming turd of a movie is in fact a brilliant spoof.

American kid goes to Scotland, befriends a stray mongrel and together they transform the fortunes of a local football team. Probably the greatest film commenting on the state of Scottish football that has ever been written.

I mean how can anyone take this film seriously. Take Nick Moran for example. Two reasons why he shouldn't have appeared in this film. 1)His Scottish accent is laughably poor and 2)He has the football skills that only an American could be impressed with.

Then there's the blatant stereotyping of Scots as haggis eating, kilt wearing, long haired, rotting teethed crap footballers. Now I've met a few Scots in my time and I can safely say that not all of them wear kilts.

Of course any film about Scotland worth it's salt needs to have some sort of battle against the English. So enter the Auld enemy on an open top double decker Routemaster bus that has driven all the way from London which is no doubt just 20 miles away in the eyes of your average American. And what would you call an English football team if you were an American director trying to provoke a reaction from English football fans with no sense of humour too? The London Bangers - Genius! Watch this film and enjoy. Laugh at the special effects of the dog dribbling the ball and cheer as Nick Moran makes a Christiano Ronaldo stepover look like he's hurdling a six foot fence.

Superb.

My 7 yr old is football (not 'soccer') mad and was thoroughly disappointed with this terrible, terrible film. This film was made by people with no knowledge at all of football- the 'European Cup' is a charity match between a village team of the usual 'oddballs and misfits' and implausibly a team called 'London' with the biggest football star in the country in it. The representation of Scotland is equally inaccurate - from the accents it seems to be populated by mainly Irish and Welsh, kilts are everywhere and everyone eats Haggis at football games and have never heard of pizza.

The dog kicks a cartoonish looking CGI football around but probably the saddest thing is Nick Moran, who has descended from 'Lock, Stock..' to this. Strangely, on the DVD bonus feature cast interviews, Eastender Moran affects a Scottish accent and says that he'd never acted before this film! How ashamed of this film must he be to try to pretend to be someone else! Even the rest of the cast are joking and making ironic comments about how crap this film is. Anyway, if your kids love football, they will be bored by this. If your kids love animals they will be bored by this.

Go and watch a dog chase a ball around the park instead.

This is a masterpiece of creativity.

They have managed to conjure up a whole movie about a Scottish football team and their talented, genetically modified, canine number 10, without even a rudimentary knowledge of any of those things.

So charming is the film that I'm sure that even the most hard-hearted Scotch people would forgive the odd inaccuracy in the portrayal of Scotch dialect, accent, climate, cuisine, history. Let's be honest, can anyone really differentiate between the Australian, Irish, Bristolian and Scotch accents?

And I'm sure many a tourist must have mistaken the highlands for parts of California, with it's baking sunshine and slim, tanned residents.

I've heard some people question the plausibility of how one charity, grudge map can result in the European cup going to a small village football team. But people forget that this has already happened when the great AC Milan team of 93/94 was forced to give the champion's league trophy to Paul Gasgcoine's uncle, when he beat half the team at arm wrestling in a Yugoslavian dive bar.

Any questions about Nick Moran's acting should be directed to Guy Ritchie, who's strict Shakespearian training will leave a mark on actors long after they have finished working with him. The 6 years between Lock Stock and Soccer Dog, were merely the blink of an eye.

It's a truly wonderful piece of cinema. And the dog is hot

... for this utter rubbish, as someone else aptly put it. So sorry. The only reason I gave it a two is because the dog is fairly cute and shouldn't be judged harshly for appearing in this abomination. As a soccer playing American with Scottish friends I know both a) soccer, and b) Scots, and it's obvious the makers of this "film for (very slow) children" had no clue about either, nor about casting, nor about writing, nor about film production. It's a real dog. Makes the Air Bud movies look like Orson Welles - those films were fairly bad too but at least they had a structure, and didn't rely as much on stereotypes.

Spare your kids this one.