In my life, there has only ever been one sport that I showed any kind of interest in… ice hockey. Partly due to the frenetic mania and high-speed violence of the game, partly because of the funny names like Konowalchuk and Rafalski, but mostly because I also used to watch the Mighty Ducks movies… a lot. As a result, I got quite into it. However, there aren’t too many particularly good ice hockey movies out there. Hell, there aren’t too many ice hockey movies period. Sure, there are some (the aforementioned Mighty Ducks trilogy, Youngblood, Mystery, Alaska, Miracle, Miracle on Ice and the one genuinely good one, Slap Shot), but it’s a short list. Well, Seann William Scott stars in the titular role of the latest addition to that list… Goon.

Doug Glatt is the black sheep of his intellectual family. More gifted with ‘fist smarts’ than ‘brain smarts’, he acts as a club bouncer until he comes to the attention of an ice hockey coach after he defends his friend by knocking out a player. Eventually signed on to a minor league team as their new enforcer, the team start to win their games and make headway in the league. However, one of his team-mates doesn’t take kindly to Doug’s presence, and the higher the team climb, the closer he comes to facing the league’s most notorious brawler.

Goon isn’t a particularly complicated film. It never really tries to be. It knows exactly what it is and never really tries to overreach itself, straining for glory beyond its reach, for that way lies folly. So many similar sports movies have tried to stretch beyond their own limitations and end up failing completely because they simply aren’t as good as they think they are. However, here, simplicity is the key. Not only is this what marks Goon apart from many others, it actually makes it very much like its hero, Doug.

Doug Glatt has always spent his life as an outsider in his own family, his own community in general. Not blessed with the same intellectual gifts as his family, he’s just a well-mannered, decent guy who can’t find anywhere to fit in. His only talent lies in his ability to lay the proverbial smackdown on people. So when he’s given a shot to be part of a hockey team who want him precisely for his fist-swinging prowess, he goes for it. He may have the odd moment of crisis when people say he’s not really a hockey player, that he’s not part of the team, that he’s just a thug, but that’s a temporary setback. He is part of the part of this team. He belongs.

And that’s exactly what makes Goon such a fun, surprisingly enjoyable movie. The latest addition to the hockey movie roster, it knows its job and it does it with an enthusiasm that it’s difficult to find from others. Whereas some movies will show how one person made a difference to the team and led them to glory, Goon seems to have actually learned the lesson about teamwork, showing how much of a difference the team makes to him as well. They’re lost without him; he’s lost without them.

And there is other great stuff going on in there, too. Doug’s pursuit of a sort of Alison Pill’s hockey groupie (read as: beer-swilling slut - her words, not mine) is great because it’s so oddly cute. And the build up to the inevitable fight between Doug and Liev Schreiber’s Ross Rhea, the league’s premier head-smasher on the brink of retirement, has the rather amusing (and not unconscious) undertone of the De Niro/Pacino face-off in Heat. There’s even a coffee shop conversation set up exactly like theirs. That was funny.

Goon is a pretty silly movie, but it’s so earnest in its desire to simply entertain, it’s hard to not be taken in by its genuinely charming ways. Seann William Scott really nicely underplays Doug and that, along with his quiet principles, just makes him easier to like, and that makes the film easier to enjoy. It may all sound like the kind of film Adam Sandler would make and comedy gurn the hell out of, but it's not. This is a film with someone you can actually like in the lead role. It’s one of those films that, if you watch with a bunch of friends around, you should have a good time with it.

Paul Costello also has a daily movie review blog called A Cinephile’s Journey, looking at films old and new.