Score: A Hockey Musical

I don't know how to account for the two stars. I guess the camera was stable and the audio was clear. I didn't see the microphone so that's a good thing.

This is not a film. This is an embarrassment. The music is so poor it's really embarrassing.

I'm not a big fan of musicals, but the Jungle Book, Moulin Rouge, Chicago were entertaining. They had good songs, the music is great (especially the Jungle Book), great lyrics and a good story.

This has none of those ingredients. The music is elevator music quality. The lyrics sound like they're written by a 12-year-old who's impressed with rhyming Venus and penis.

For some reason this film is advertising for other films or attempting to appeal/pander to the audience by referring to other films. Why mention the Notebook? The Notebook or any half-decent film would not give a shout-out to some Canadian films, so why do you do it in your films?

The rhymes are really poor, rhyming "alone" with "poem." The meter is messed up, there's a lyric about the umbilical chord which was so forced.

In this masterpiece, the boy's family forces a hockey scout to listen to their terrible songs. The director is completely oblivious to that irony.

There's just random Canadian stuff thrown to pander to the extremely small market. His girlfriend has a fragrance allergy. There are random "ehs" thrown in the lyrics. A British musical would not put "innit" in their lyrics, but British filmmakers are professionals and would hire professional writers to write their lyrics. This director felt that he can do it all, write songs, write the screenplay and direct.

If I were him I would make a documentary on how I tried to retrieve and destroy every last copy of this film.

If you are unaware, this was a box office failure. It wasn't a success on any level afterwards. As of speaking it is not available on iTunes anywhere except Ireland. It takes less than 4 rentals/purchases to make it worthwhile keeping it in the iTunes store, so this is not even getting single digit rentals. It has not been released on Bluray. And finally, even pirates are not pirating this thing. It is not worth anything to anyone.

Don't believe me? Go find a copy and watch it. Then come back here and say "you were wrong." Write a review. The problem is that some people give this film 10 stars raising it score to 4.9. 18% have given this film 10 stars, meaning they think this is one of the best films of all time.

I give it two stars and the average is 4.9. Some say 10, some say 1 and I say 2. We can't all be right.

FYI, Mr. Director, Venus is the second closest planet to the sun. Saying (wear a sweater, out there) "it's colder than Venus" doesn't make that much sense. Earth is colder than Venus. Not that you care. You probably wrote this film in 12 hours using a "How to make a film in two weeks and make millions" self-help book.

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.

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?

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.

For a hockey musical, you get what you get. If you enjoy watching people sing about hockey and their personal problems, then you might enjoy this movie. Some of the songs sound sort of the same, just to warn you.

The performances for the most part, are believable, and the hockey dancing choreography is pretty impressive. The lyrics are hit or miss - you'll probably either really like them or really hate them.

The plot is really obvious - boy likes hockey, struggles with his own philosophy, and falls in love with a girl. You've probably seen movies like that before. If you liked them, you'll like this one too. I did, anyway.

Walter Gretzky and Theo Fleury make cameos.