We have twice suggested you watch this flick recently in our review section, offering it up as superior sports-comedy fare in lieu of Leatherheads and Semi-Pro. To make it official - Slap Shot is the balls. You will emerge from it with a new affinity for ice hockey, 70's threads and even tragic paedo-manna Hanson.
The story is the usual minor league US sports tale (but in 1977 it wasn't tired) - crappy local team about to get sold, adopts new crazy strategy to reverse fortunes and make a final push at success. Seen it all before? Yes, but not done better than this. Directed breezily by George Roy Hill and starring the great Paul Newman (a pairing that brought you Butch & Sundance and The Sting - fuck Redford), this is an extremely satisfying comedy, with engaging characters, big laughs, believeable sub-plots and, its money card, funny violence. Even without the hockey action, this is a high-quality movie, but with full-on, bone-crunching hits added to the stew, it's solid gold.
The story is the usual minor league US sports tale (but in 1977 it wasn't tired) - crappy local team about to get sold, adopts new crazy strategy to reverse fortunes and make a final push at success. Seen it all before? Yes, but not done better than this. Directed breezily by George Roy Hill and starring the great Paul Newman (a pairing that brought you Butch & Sundance and The Sting - fuck Redford), this is an extremely satisfying comedy, with engaging characters, big laughs, believeable sub-plots and, its money card, funny violence. Even without the hockey action, this is a high-quality movie, but with full-on, bone-crunching hits added to the stew, it's solid gold.
The trick that Newman's team employs to stave off extinction is to become the dirtiest, cheating-est team in the league. This attracts a legion of savage fans, boosts attendance and so on. The side's change in fortune and new attitude is made flesh in the Hanson brothers, three bespectacled king nerds who also happen to be the filthiest bullies ever to step on the ice. They are hilarious, because ultraviolence is funny.
If you need more than that, this movie provides ample visual evidence why so many inferior comedies base themselves in the 70's. The clobber and hairstyles that abound here in their original form are straight-up gas and are far funnier presented here in their original form than any throwback attempt to exaggerate the fashion of the day. Newman's wardrobe alone would strike serial snitch Huggy Bear blind.
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