4. Goal 3- Taking on the World
This is probably the least well-known film on this list, but its just so amazingly, pants-wettingly awful that it has to be mentioned. But first of all, to those who dont know the
Goal! series, a bit of background.
Goal followed the rags-to-riches story of one Santiago Munez, an illegal immigrant in the USA who happens to be blessed with outrageous footballing skills. The first film followed Santiagos rapid rise having been spotted playing Sunday-league football by an ex-scout at Newcastle United. Predictably, he does very well, picks himself up a love interest along the way and rubs shoulders with actual pros in some of the most hilariously awful cameos ever committed to celluloid. The second film continued Santiagos ascent by having him join Real Madrid, leading to important life-lessons as he begins to believe his own hype, alienating his friends whilst continuing to have stilted conversations with David Beckham. Like I said before, these films hardly set the world on fire. But they were excellent trashy fun, and a superb piece of wish fulfilment to boot. Of course, it certainly helped that this was the first FIFA-sponsored football-flick, giving it a glitzy advantage over previous dourer affairs such as
When Saturday Comes and
Theres Only One Jimmy Grimble, without royally jumping the shark
Escape to Victory-style. In fact, against our better judgement we came to like Santiago Munez, or at least care about his plight. Apart from the surreal ending of Goal 2, where it foregoes all narrative cohesion in favour of becoming an extended advert for David Beckham, this series always maintained a consistent narrative and with many issues left unresolved, we were interested in seeing what would come of its protagonist. But
Goal 3: Taking on the World was never going to answer those questions. In a move that would provoke utter bafflement, the narrative was beaten down and reshaped beyond recognition. Every single character thus far was canned, with the exception of Munez himself. But even then, whilst the actor Kuno Becker was given top billing, Santiago only makes two short cameos to conclude his saga and explain what happened to everyone. The rest of the plot is handed over to some thoroughly unlikeable Englishmen playing at the World Cup, given their way into the film by apparently being best friends with the previous protagonist. I had to take them at their word; theyd never shown up prior to this train wreck. Comic relief was provided by a group of Geordies who had turned up fleetingly during the events of the first film and were now following the England team during the events of Germany 2006. If all the above sounds utterly ridiculous, thats because it was. This wasnt a
Goal film in anything but name; you could completely rename it, and nobody would have any clue that it was related to its predecessors. It was like being promised a Lamborghini only for a Morris Minor to turn up on your drive. The laughable plot was made even worse by the producers strange decision to slash the budget on this rather profitable series. A main selling point of the series thus far had been its footballing action, taking place in actual stadiums and featuring real players.
Goal 3 canned this match-day in favour of green-screen technology, leading to predictable results Boy, did it look crap, and boy, did the film suffer for it. Thus did the canon end; a once promising conclusion brought low by a litany of comically inept decisions regarding production and plot. It might not have been the greatest series the world had ever seen, but the
Goal trilogy certainly deserved a better closer than the quite frankly derisory one it got.