Slap Shot

I still have a few movies to get through from Paul Newman's turn as TCM's Star of the Month back in May. This time around, it's Slap Shot.

Paul Newman, who's really much too old for the role but that's another story, plays Reggie Dunlop, the player-coach of the Charlestown Chiefs, a minor-league hockey team in one of those mill towns in Pennsylvania. (Johnstown, PA was the town standing in for Charlestown.) This is one of the lowest-level hockey leagues out there, and the team is terrible. The GM McGrath (Strother Martin) would probably be OK with trading players for a six-pack of beer; the Québecois goalkeeper (Yvon Barrette) is a head-case, and most of the players seem more interested in drinking and carousing, with the exception of Ned Braden (Michael Ontkean).

It's not bad enough that the team is bad. The company that owns the steelworks is planning on closing the factory down, which probably means the team will go under since the town wouldn't be able to support a team any longer. Reggie hopes that perhaps he can get the owner to sell the team to a syndicate in Florida that's building a rink down there, but who knows. In any case, he's also got an estranged wife Francine (Jennifer Warren) who is just as likely to leave him as to follow him to a new team.

Finally, to top it all off, McGrath has acquired a couple of new players, the Hanson brothers. They all wear thick Coke bottle glasses, and seem very immature, as they'd rather play with the toys they brought with them than do the more grown-up things the other guys on the team do. And to top it all off, the Hansons are utter goons, which is exactly the opposite of how Reggie thinks hockey should be played.

But, strangely enough, the Hansons' goon tactics work, and the team starts winning. Ned thinks it's terrible, and although Reggie would prefer to win by playing traditional hockey, he's got malleable enough ethics that he'll take these wins. Plus, it's an opportunity to gain the notice of folks in higher leagues. The other teams' fans all hate the Chiefs, but the Chiefs have also developed a cult following. If only he can convince the owner to go through with that sale....

I'm not a hockey player, so I don't know how far from realistic the off-ice scenes are. I do know enough about the sports that the Hansons' tactics are things that would have gotten so many penalties called that they'd never see the ice, at least if the referee sees them. With that said, however, Slap Shot is a largely funny dark comedy that plays out like what you might get if Paddy Chayefsky had decided to take what would become Network and write it about hockey instead. The only real problem I had was with Ned's actions in the climactic hockey game at the end. Even if his change of character was realistic, it still wasn't very funny.

All that having been said, however, the movie's is also extremely dirty. Bad languages and sexual themes abound, so the movie definitely isn't one for the kiddies. But not every movie needs to be a family film. I can highly recommend Slap Shot to any sports fan.