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.

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?

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...

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!

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.