Caleb McLaughlin And Steph Curry's Goat Is A Treasure Trove For Basketball Fans

What if an animal could play basketball? Well, us '90s kids know that question was answered sufficiently already thanks to the classic film "Air Bud," and that movie went the extra mile of being presented in live action. This month's "Goat" is animated via the good folks at Sony Pictures Animation, and what it lacks in real live animals playing sports, it more than makes up for in imagination. After all, "Goat" doesn't just involve the titular teenage Boer goat, Will Harris (voiced by "Stranger Things" alum Caleb McLaughlin), playing "roarball," a slightly-tweaked version of basketball for the film's universe. The rest of his team includes a black panther, Jett (Gabrielle Union), an ostrich, Olivia (Nicola Coughlan), a Komodo dragon, Modo (Nick Kroll), an Indian rhinoceros, Archie (David Harbour), and a giraffe, Lenny (Golden State Warriors star and co-producer Stephen Curry). As you can tell from that description, "Goat" is essentially an underdog basketball sports movie set in a "Zootopia"-esque world, where the animals stand-in for humans.

Yet the filmmakers behind "Goat" didn't merely throw some colorful animal characters into basketball jerseys and call it a day. Instead, director Tyree Dillihay and the rest of his team have made "Goat" an animated feature which emulates the best of the studios' recent offerings. Like "KPop Demon Hunters," "Goat" features a hip, propulsive soundtrack filled with new hits and eclectic favorites. Like the "Spider-Verse" movies, the film has a unique, flashy animation style filled with energy, and where the Spidey films are stuffed with references and Easter eggs for fans of the Marvel Comics character, "Goat" is a treasure trove for basketball devotees. During a press event and a screening of the film that I got to attend at SPA HQ recently, this last point was demonstrated in abundance.

The press day at Sony Pictures Animation headquarters in mid-city Los Angeles began with a special screening of "Goat" itself. It's a fun, wholesome, heartwarming and engaging all-ages movie that just about anyone can appreciate. However, basketball fans in particular will adore it, and not just because it portrays the sport in a dynamic, stylized fashion. "Goat" is stuffed with love for basketball and basketball culture, something which was continually reinforced as we got to tour SPA and meet several of the key creative minds behind the movie. During a Q&A with director Tyree Dillihay and co-director Adam Rosette, the filmmakers happily explained how throwing a ton of basketball culture references into the movie was important to them. As Dillihay said:

"Did you catch that Allen Iverson step over? The Anthony Edwards, John Collins posterization? We're taking from yesteryear and today. And then that's just on the court. Off the court, the fashion, the swag, getting into the athlete celebrity lifestyle and what that looks like today [...] Hopefully, I think we've created a generation defining underdog sports movie."

The references aren't merely a celebration of the culture, either. As Rosette explained, they also help inform the characters in the film, too:

"So for us, we were like, well, what's the relatability? How do you get into it? How do you make this about more than just winning a game? And for Will, [...] it was about wanting to prove his mom right, about wanting her dream to be his dream. That opened up the world emotionally for us. I don't know if you guys know this, but Steph Curry writes on his shoes. And that for us was a big piece of it as well."

While "Goat" is saturated with references to decades of basketball lore and culture, it would stand to reason that the film's fantasy version of the sport, roarball, would only slightly resemble real-world basketball. Surprisingly, this is not the case. Sure, the film's roarball matches are set in themed arenas which contain a lot of unusual obstacles and features, kind of like a video game (a match set in Vineland, a jungle city, involves vines that can work with or against the players). Yet Tyree Dillihay, Adam Rosette, and the other Sony Pictures Animation folks went the extra mile to keep roarball's basketball relationship as authentic as possible.

This involved utilizing producer Steph Curry's connections, namely to his teammate Andre Iguodala, who was brought in to help choreograph and plan out the various plays executed in each game of the film. Head of cinematography John Clark explained the general concept of how this process went from storyboard to screen:

"We planned it out just like real basketball play...they draw the X's and O's, and we set up a table, which is the court, and then, we have all these 3D-printed figures [which they would use to] actually set the play up. [...] Each play had a name. This one was called Cyclone, which is an actual name that they use on the Warriors team. So, these plays came from Andre's huge library of NBA plays he has in his brain."

As this implies, "Goat" is a unique hybrid of authentic real-world basketball and imaginative animated fantasy. It manages to capture both a sense of the reality of the sport as well as more fantastical emotions. If you love all things basketball as well as basketball movies, then "Goat" is for you.