GOAT may look like one of those underdog sports movies where you can clock the protagonist and antagonist in the first five minutes, but it has more on its mind than simply winning the big game. The animated film is a love letter to basketball and everything that comes with it. This isn’t just about the score. It’s about the plays, the chemistry, the legacy a veteran fights to protect, and the way a team can become the heartbeat of a community.
GOAT follows Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin), a small goat who earns a shot at the roarball pros, a full-contact league that echoes the modern NBA in both spectacle and scrutiny. Will’s dream of joining the Vineland Thorns becomes reality after a video of him challenging a bear goes viral, but the opportunity arrives with strings attached. To ownership, he’s a marketable story before he’s a player, a ticket-selling novelty engineered for buzz. And to veteran icon Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union), he initially registers as hype: the kind of “next era” headline that disappears as quickly as it arrives.
But when the chance to prove himself finally arrives, Will reveals he’s more than hype or a marketing tool. He’s a capable, instinctive player who helps rally the Thorns toward something resembling hope. And not just for the team but for the city they call home. Just as importantly, his presence forces Jett to confront the scrutiny surrounding her own legacy. Despite elite stats, she’s labeled “washed,” blamed for the franchise’s failures, and pushed by ownership and media narratives to symbolically pass the torch before she’s ready. Will’s presence helps Jett confront her athletic mortality and the way the league, the media, fans, social media, and even ownership start treating her like a story that’s already over.
The best sports cinema doesn’t rely solely on the drama of the game itself, but on everything that surrounds it. For Will, that love starts with his mother, Louise (Jennifer Hudson), who takes him to his first live game. It’s a core memory that becomes the emotional blueprint for everything that follows. It’s not just the spectacle that imprints on him, but the intimacy of experiencing it with her, the feeling of being seen, supported, and invited into a world bigger than himself. That moment fuels his drive to play, turning ambition into something rooted in love rather than ego.
If Will’s relationship with his mother grounds GOAT in tenderness, Jett’s story exposes the harsher side of the same sport. Jett’s arc is where GOAT most clearly complicates the familiar underdog formula. Rather than treating her as an obstacle for Will to overcome, the film frames her as an aging legend fighting to retain control of her own narrative in a culture quick to label veterans “washed.” Ownership begins to see her as expendable, while fans desperate for a championship project their frustration onto the very player they once demanded greatness from.
Vineland did not just expect greatness from Jett. It expected a title, and anything less curdled into resentment. She has spent years branding herself as “the GOAT,” an all-time scorer whose swagger is part of the show, but the film is clear about how that self-mythologizing turns brittle when the rings do not follow. Talk shows pick apart her every misstep, barbershop debates reduce her to a problem to solve, and even ownership weaponizes the “washed” narrative to justify moving on.
GOAT understands that Jett is not only being judged for what she can do now. She is being punished for a championship she never delivered, and for daring to still believe she belongs at the center of the story.
Rather than portraying Jett as a bitter veteran threatened by an unproven rookie, the film reframes her as a surrogate maternal presence for Will, shifting their conflict from rivalry to inheritance. Will does not just admire Jett, he frames her career as the reason he believes he can belong in this world at all.
That emotional shift crystallizes during a quieter detour when he brings her to the diner he once shared with his late mother. Surrounded by waitresses and regulars who actually understand the game, Jett is forced to see herself through a different lens. Her old high school jersey hangs on the wall beside newspaper clippings of her accomplishments, evidence that her value was never limited to championships she never won or trending narratives. GOAT suggests that legacy lives most honestly in community memory, not in loud fan discourse or social media verdicts.
That reclamation of legacy unfolds within a sharply observed portrait of modern sports culture. Will’s ascent is powered as much by virality as by talent, a reminder that today’s athletes are shaped by highlight reels, talk show debates, memes, and narratives that travel faster than truth. GOAT captures both the exhilaration and the cruelty of modern technology.
Fandom can create belonging and shared mythology, but it can also flatten players into disposable content the moment attention shifts elsewhere. By grounding Will and Jett in family, mentorship, and community memory, the film quietly resists a culture that measures worth only in views, rings, or trending relevance.
The film’s visual language reinforces the pressures of the game, the scale of the arena, how its massiveness dwarfs the players, and belonging. The rhythm of the game sequences balances clarity with chaos so spectacle never overwhelms character. Color, motion, and camera movement communicate momentum and scrutiny at once, allowing quiet emotional beats to breathe between bursts of kinetic action. Even the most elaborate set pieces function less as visual excess and more as metaphors for expectation and performance.
The arenas also deepen the worldbuilding in ways that feel specific rather than gimmicky. Each city’s court reflects its environment, from jungle terrain to volcanic heat, ice, undersea structures, and mile-high altitude, turning home court advantage into an extension of identity. Even better, these spaces feel responsive. The ground shifts with impact and emotion, making the arenas part of the story’s pressure rather than decorative backdrops.
Beyond the animation itself, GOAT is loaded with visual shorthand that reads like a love letter to basketball history. The film sprinkles in recognizable echoes of iconic celebrations and moments, the kind of imagery fans carry in their muscle memory, from swaggering stepovers like Iverson over Lue to Dr. J cradle rocks to the late Kobe Bryant podium poses that signal arrival. None of it feels like empty cosplay. The references are woven into character, emotion, and momentum, grounding roarball in the mythology of the real sport while still letting the story stand on its own for viewers who have never watched a full game.
What makes GOAT so beautiful is its understanding that community is not a background detail. The team reflects the city’s strength, determination, and resilience, and the city in turn shapes what the team believes it can become. You see that most clearly when Will takes Jett to the diner, a room full of proud blue-collar regulars who might not have season tickets or courtside access, but still know every rhythm of the game. They keep up from wherever they can, watching the TVs above the counter, listening for calls, tracking the highs and lows as part of the workday pulse.
GOAT honors that kind of fandom as something earned, not purchased, and it suggests the Thorns do not belong only to the people in the arena. When Will’s mom takes him to the Thorns’ stadium, it is not for photos or status. It is for his first game, that indescribable moment that defines their mother and son relationship. It’s also when a sport stops being something you watch and becomes something you feel. The joy in Will’s eyes makes the point clearer than any speech.
So even though the upper-class wealthy folk own the team on paper, the reality is these teams belong to the city because the city is the one that lives with it. They belong to everyone who has ever built their week around a game, watched from a restaurant booth, a bar, or a living room, and found pride in seeing their community fight back.
None of this means GOAT is without simplification. As a family film running just under two hours, it inevitably smooths some of the messier edges of the sports world it gestures toward. Ownership is framed in broad, almost cartoonishly transactional strokes, which makes the critique of how leagues treat aging stars feel emotionally resonant but dramatically thin.
GOAT also nods to the cruelty of modern fandom, talk shows, memes, and viral judgment, yet stops short of interrogating why that volatility exists or how deeply it shapes athletes’ lives. To be fair, the film is not trying to deliver a full anatomy of toxic fandom or the greedy institutions that own these team. It is simply acknowledging the noise as part of the atmosphere its characters have to survive.
GOAT is ultimately less interested in deconstructing the sport than in reminding us why we love it in the first place. It does that through Will, a son grieving his mother yet staying connected to her through the game, and through the new family he finds in Jett and the Thorns.
8.5/10
