Score: A Hockey Musical

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.

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?

C'mon it's a musical about hockey!

The synchronized dance routines on skates where fantastic! In the vein of Busby Berkley they were epic.

I still have the ending song stuck in my brain.

Did I mention Olivia Newton John!!

Worth the view - you will laugh again and again!

What an odd movie this is. It's like Glee meets hockey... not that I really know what Glee is like because God forbid I watch such a program... but I have an idea. Hockey players dancing and singing. It's a pretty stupid movie but as a hockey fan, I found many of the musical numbers rather funny to watch; I was laughing quite a bit! I'm surprised at myself for thinking that I'd actually consider watching this again someday and that says something about how worthwhile a movie is.

5.6 / 10

--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener!