SPORTS!: Slap Shot / Big Fan

A first for Macintosh & Maud: a movie so bad, we had to review another one just to feel better.

We won't mince words: Slap Shot is a criminally awful movie. Ostensibly, this film is a classic about one of our favorite sports - hockey. But the aggressively violent sexism and homophobia just cannot be reconciled even for the standards of 1977, let alone our current time. It's sad, because Paul Newman and Michael Ontkean are really acting their asses off, and the Hanson Brothers are legendary characters. Still, a grossly offensive script and meandering, aimless direction made this the worst movie Macintosh and Maud have ever seen.

Since we needed to wash the taste of that monstrosity out of our mouths, we decided to take on a second film this week: Big Fan. Patton Oswalt and Kevin Corrigan give award-caliber performances in a script that's thin on plot but rich in character studies. We really like this movie, most of all because it examines sports from the perspective of the fans, and does so without judging or demonizing its lead characters. It's an underrated gem that anyone who's ever been deeply obsessed with anything can appreciate.

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Intro music taken from the Second Movement of Ludwig von Beethoven's 9th Symphony. Licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Hong Kong (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 HK) license. To hear the full performance or get more information, visit the song page at the Internet Archive.