If you can’t be the best in the world, there’s no shame in being the worst. Somebody has to be. A ranking’s a ranking, after all, and is it not better to have that place in history than none at all. When it comes to international football, American Samoa proved themselves a contender for rock bottom back in 2001. They lost 31-0 to Australia. Two decades on, it’s surely a dubious honour for the team to find themselves subject to the Taika Waititi treatment. Not that the team’s record breaking loss is Waititi’s focus here. Following the lead of Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s superior 2014 documentary, of the same name, Next Goal Wins concerns the hiring of Thomas Rongen as beleaguered coach some ten years later. Nothing like a white saviour to get the drama going.
Cultural indiscretions aside, now’s a very good time to be a fan of all things gobblefunk and scrumdiddlyumptious. Not only do Roald Dahl’s bestselling tales of hard-done-by kiddywinks and awful adults continue to enjoy an enviably prominent place in bookshops around the world but film versions too litter the zeitgeist. Many of them have Netflix to thank. Not Wonka. A year on from Matilda, Paul King’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory prequel spawns from the producers of the Harry Potter films. It chases that same festive dopamine rush that the J. K. Rowling adaptations delivered across a much-missed decade and is bang on the money in every way the Fantastic Beasts films never managed to be.
Emerald Fennel’s sophomore feature is a more self-conscious indulgence than her first. The sense that we are trading in the early days of a future auteur remains but, second time around, the restraint of experience is missing. While Fennel’s penchant for a venomous turn of phrase is undiminished – Saltburn drips with the acid of her pen – the film hasn’t Promising Young Woman’s precision and focussed bite. It sprawls in languorous pacing, dives headfirst into pitfalls of its own making, and appears altogether too pleased with its, admittedly resplendent, cinematography to truly engage beyond thematic artifice.
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