VOD film review: Goats
Review Overview
Characters
2Sympathy
2Jokes
2Andrew Jones | On 06, Feb 2014
Director: Christopher Neil
Cast: David Duchovny, Vera Farmiga
Watch Goats online in the UK: Amazon Prime / Apple TV (iTunes) / Prime Video (Buy/Rent) / Google Play
“GOAT” stands for “Greatest Of All Time”. Goats, an indie dramedy starring David Duchovny, on the other hand, stands for “Hey, here’s some affluent folk who have no real problems gliding through 90 minutes of angst”.
The basic premise sees young teen Ellis gearing up to leave Tucson and his rich home life, as well as his best friend, Goat Man (Duchovny), a man with crazy hair, a beard and goats that he walks across the desert.
Ellis moves to a prep school and has to struggle with being intelligent and rich and with his parents being divorced while still loving him. He moans about it all. Meanwhile, his parents struggle to express their love for their son, except for every scene where they express their love for their son.
Goats could easily be perceived as a satire on the culture it focuses on, but given the writer’s previous work was a similarly self-indulgent movie called Smart People (starring Elliot Page, Dennis Quaid and Sarah Jessica Parker), there’s no wry tongue in the cheek of the filmmakers. This is an earnest look at wealthy people with happy lives trying to find more.
Beyond decent visuals and performances, the empty Goats feels like not just a waste of time but a waste of talent like Duchovny, Keri Russell, Ty Burrell, Justin Kirk, Vera Farmiga and Dakota Johnson. The indie drama scene in the US is more than films about affluent middle-class people that mean nothing, say nothing and do nothing. Goats is a whole lot of that. It is a vapid film. Still, Duchovny has great hair.
Goats is available to watch online on Amazon Prime Video as part of a Prime membership or a £5.99 monthly subscription.