20 Recent Movies WAY Better Than They Had Any Right To Be

Expectations are never particularly high when it's blatantly obvious that a film's entire script was reverse-engineered after somebody came up with a cute title first, as is clearly the case with Sony's animated sports comedy GOAT.

A film about an anthropomorphic goat who wants to become the - wait for it - Greatest of All Time at a basketball-adjacent sport called Roarball? Hardly an inspired concept, and one which invited subterranean expectations from the jump.

But credit where it's due - GOAT is one of the year's most pleasant surprises so far, a visually stunning, vibrant, funny, and even heartfelt film that's not saying anything hugely profound, but offers up positive messages for kids in a gorgeous bow.

Though the post-Spider-Verse animation style is definitely starting to feel a little tired these days, in this case it's tremendously effective in depicting the fluid grace of not-basketball, elevated further by some distinctive art direction.

Not bad at all for a film that basically sounds like a Mad Lib.