Score: A Hockey Musical

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.

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!

i had to watch this movie. of course i had to. it looked like the most ridiculous film of all time. and you know what? it was. i can't decide if i enjoyed this movie or not. well, no, i didn't enjoy this movie. i have trouble imagining how anyone could. but i did, somewhat, enjoy the experience of watching it. every time i thought it couldn't get sillier, it did. for the entire duration, i had this sad smile on my face, shaking my head and thinking "this is what we opened the TIFF with... no wonder nobody takes Canadian cinema seriously".

its just so awful in every way. it makes me sad that people like hawksley workman and george stroumbolopolous had anything to do with it.

ah well. it was a hockey musical. could it possibly have been good? i don't think so.

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...