Slap Shot (1977)

I liked this movie when I first saw it over twenty years ago, and its still great! The swinging 70's get perfectly captured, by the music, hair styles and especially the awful clothes. All the actors do their own skating, so you aren't distracted looking for body doubles the entire movie. The screenplay is priceless and if anyone thinks its sexist - a woman wrote this movie! This is the only hockey movie worth anything - hopefully "Mystery, Alaska" can join it.

Fmovies: One of the knocks that has always been given to Paul Newman was that he was not right for comedy. When you're talking about stuff like A New Kind of Love or Rally Round the Flag Boys that's probably true. But Slapshot shows that what Paul Newman needed to be good for comedy was something not quite so sophisticated.

Slapshot ain't Oscar Wilde, but it's not quite to the level of the Police Academy movies. It's just right for Paul Newman as the veteran player/coach with a team of misfits from one of hockey's minor leagues who's forever looking for a break from the majors.

The Charlestown Chiefs who seem to be the hockey equivalent of the New York Mets are having a perennial losing season. The town itself is one flush away from despondency with a mill that was the main employer in the town shutting down. That means the paltry attendance the Chiefs already have will diminish more. It's an uncertain future.

So with nothing to lose, Newman's boys turn the sport into a hockey facsimile of the World Wrestling Federation. In no other sport are fights among the players so accepted. But Newman ratchets it up to an exponential level.

And his team actually starts to win and the Charlestown Chiefs become a gate attraction.

There's a lot more to the resolution of the team's problems, but that championship game is unforgettable.

All Hail the Brothers Hanson.

Despite a dismissive response from critics on release, "Slap Shot" has become THE hockey film everyone knows and loves, and it's easy to see why. It's also easy to understand its initial reception. The film is perhaps excessively profane, it doesn't really seem so today but taken in the context of the time one could easily see it as straining for shock value. Paul Newman's least classy role for sure, and George Roy Hill had made some big movies before this one.

Of course there are still plenty of people who accuse this of being vulgar, crass, cartoony trash. The comedy is, sure. But it's also good at being what it is in that regard. Kevin Smith is making a hockey movie about the goon era of hockey based on the Warren Zevon song "Hit Somebody!". If that isn't a rehash of "Slap Shot" I'll eat my hat. The humor is pretty much exactly Smith's style. I expect far more sentimentality from him than "Slap Shot" offers, though. Still, it's GOOD lowbrow humor, with the occasional clever bit that keeps it afloat. Incredibly sharp, memorable dialogue as well.

But what really sets "Slap Shot" apart from most sports flicks to me isn't the comedy, it's the drama. The characters are convincingly-drawn, even the ones which exist purely for comic relief. Nancy Dowd was a good writer and George Roy Hill was a great director. Together they found a perfect balance. Sure, you can watch this movie and laugh and get wasted with your buddies after a hockey game one night, but there's so much more to it. I find it works remarkably well as an examination of the society and community which the sport creates, and which lives around it. The portrayal of marital strife and a town in the midst of economic meltdown is tremendously affecting, the character's relationships and Reggie's story being the film's greatest achievement.

It's also a great examination of hockey, a sophisticated debate over what hockey is or should be. A recent survey found 99.5% of NHL players were in favor of keeping fighting in the game, but that's to the extent that it exists today. How many would want the goon era back? There are still people who 'watch hockey for the fights', "Slap Shot" seems to acknowledge that the goon era reduced hockey to nothing more than a freakshow. The WWE on ice. Don't get me wrong, I'll jump out of my seat with the rest of the crowd if a fight breaks out, but never have cared for hockey as played during the 70's in the US, with violence as the main attraction. The movie does away with the verbal arguments about the nobility of the sport for a comic finale, but even that makes its point quite clear. The very last scene of the film, the ambiguous ending, is even greater.

Great director, great cast, great writing. That's the recipe for a great movie. "Slap Shot" most certainly is one. Gene Siskel's biggest regret as a film critic was giving this a mediocre review on release, as he came to absolutely adore the film on repeat viewings. I think it's easy to mistake this for just another sports comedy, but there's so much more to it, and if you can't see that... well, I feel sorry for you, but to each their own.

Slap Shot fmovies. I have played goal for 32 years.. On many of the men's rec teams I STILL hear someone say: "How about it tonight, guys? Old time hockey?" and everyone yells : "Pi** on old time hockey!!!" then "Eddie Shore???": "Pi** on Eddie Shore!!!" It still gets a laugh in the locker room!

The goalie being allergic to the fans is a quote from my favorite pro goaltender: the late Jacques Palante.. He was allergic, he said, to the Toronto Fans.. and would often sit the bench.

You can tell the actors are having fun making this movie.. it comes thru loud and clear!

Another locker room favorite that has survived is when you ask another player getting dressed what he is doing.. He might just answer: "Puttin' on the foil, want some???"

I've even been told on occasion that my wife is a lesbian as a joke! She ain't but I often react with mock anger and dash out of the net.

After a bad game where my defense let me down I told our coach in the locker room : " Trade me right fu***** now!!" (and the player to my right said "Now hang up")

A movie that survives this long after release is is is .... A CLASSIC!!

C'mon, this is pure comedy. No breaks, no lull parts just funny all the way through with the appropriate cheesy 70's soundtrack. This movie not being in AFI's top 100 comedy films is a travesty. If they want a period piece this was it. They sighted Fast Times, it just stands to reason that Slap Shot should fall into the listing. The Hanson's deserve special consideration. The casting is perfect

I grew up in south 'jersey when the Flyers were still the Broad Street Bullies and all lived on our side of the Walt Whitman Bridge. They had handlebar mustaches. Many spoke with thick French-Canadian accents and wore wide ties, jackets with lapels you could park a truck on, and more than the occasional leisure suit. Many were just kids when they were pulled from the farmlands of the North and found themselves in the middle of suburbia by day, and at night, playing "Old-time hockey" while the chanting and organ music echoed to the rafters. Now whether you played pro hockey like they did, or were on the semi-pro Johnstown Jets that inspired the crew here, there seems to be a prototype player who played a certain style of game for the rest of us to watch. Sadly, that era is long gone. Marketers and big business have left the game in smoldering ruins. But we still have Slapshot. It perfectly captures what the game used to be and the guys who used to play it. Paul Newman is incredible as Reggie Dunlop, the aging player-coach who seems to be the last guy to figure out his team is on the verge of folding. The fictional town has hit the skids so that means no more hockey team. But instead of going out with a whimper, Dunlop has a scheme to get his crappy team back in the standings and the fans in the stands. And as the plot develops there's locker-room talk that would make even today's teenagers shut up and take notes. Nancy Dowd's story, which she wrote after seeing her brother Ned play in the minors during his career (and parody in the movie as Ogie Oglethorpe) translates into a total classic. The raw banter between Newman and his GM, between the players -- literally all through the movie -- makes for the most quotable flick I know...but I have to be so careful where I can recite my favorites. One such place was out on the fishing boat of a hall-of-famer from the old Flyers. (It's rumored one of the characters in the movie was modeled directly from HIM.) Slapshot brought even this guy to his knees with hysterics. Just rehashing a few quotes from the movie triggered his REAL stories of his own team that won the Cup two years in a row, and then never again since. That's how well the movie tells the story of hockey. There's a lot of social commentary here, too, if you are into such a thing. Lots on relationships, male bonding, machismo and the like. Some of the subplots take the story off the ice for too long, and the movie tends to drag in spots, admittedly. But when play is on, the brutal scenes reach such a sublime level of violence all you can do is gape and laugh in astonishment. The players here have all become like Reggie himself: They don't seem to notice that they've gone too far and they are creating a goonathon just to fill arenas. Meanwhile, those with real talent get benched right along with the national anthem. It's pretty clear -- both on the screen and during the times when the movie was being made -- that Old Time Hockey was on its way out. But it didn't go with a whimper, either, and at least Slapshot was there to give it a send-off to remember.