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‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 returns with explosive reveals: ‘Every character’s heart is on fire’

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‘The Night Manager’ Season 2 returns with explosive reveals: ‘Every character’s heart is on fire’

This article contains spoilers for the first three episodes of “The Night Manager” Season 2.

It wasn’t inevitable that “The Night Manager,” an adaptation of John le Carré’s 1993 spy novel, would have a sequel. Le Carré didn’t write one and the six-episode series, which aired in 2016, had a definitive ending.

But after the show’s debut, fans clambered for more. They loved Tom Hiddleston’s brooding, charismatic Jonathan Pine, a hotel manager wrangled into the spy game by British intelligence officer Angela Burr (Olivia Colman). And at the heart of the series was the parasitic dynamic between Pine and his delightfully malicious foe, an arms dealer named Richard Onslow Roper (Hugh Laurie).

The show was so good that even the story’s author wanted it to continue. After the premiere of Season 1 at the Berlin International Film Festival, Le Carré sat across from Hiddleston, a twinkle in his eye, and said, “Perhaps there should be some more.”

“That was the first I’d heard of it or thought about it,” Hiddleston says, speaking over Zoom alongside the show’s director, Georgi Banks-Davies, from New York a few days before the U.S. premiere of “The Night Manager” Season 2 on Prime Video, which arrived Sunday with three episodes, 10 years after the first season. “But it was so extraordinary and inspiring to come from the man himself. That’s when I knew there might be an opportunity.”

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Time passed because no one wanted a sequel of less quality. Le Carré died in 2020, leaving his creative works in the care of his sons, who helm the production company the Ink Factory. That same year, screenwriter David Farr, who had penned the first series, had a vision.

“We didn’t want to rush into doing something that was all style and no substance that didn’t honor the truth of it,” Farr says, speaking separately over Zoom from London. “There was this big gap of time. But I had this very clear idea. I saw a black car crossing the Colombian hills in the past towards a boy. I knew who was in the car and I knew who the boy was.”

That image transformed into a scene in the second episode of Season 2 where a young Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva) is waiting for his father, who turns out to be none other than Roper. From there, Farr fleshed out the rest of the season, as well as the already-announced third season. He was interested in the relationship between fathers and sons, an obsession of Le Carré’s, and in how Jonathan and Roper would be entangled all these years later.

Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva) is revealed to be Roper’s son.

(Des Willie / Prime Video)

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“Teddy crystallized very quickly in my head,” Farr says. “All of the plot came later — arms smuggling and covert plans for coups in South America. But the emotional architecture, as I tend to call it, came to me quite quickly. That narrative of fathers and sons, betrayal and love is what marks Le Carré from more conventional espionage.”

“There was enormous depth in his idea,” Hiddleston adds. “It was a happy accident of 10 years having passed. They were 10 immeasurably complex years in the world, which can only have been more complex for Jonathan Pine with all his experience, all his curiosity, all his pain, all his trauma and all his courage.”

Farr sent scripts to Hiddleston in 2023 and planning for Season 2 began in earnest. The team brought Banks-Davies on in early 2024, impressed with her vision for the episodes. Hiddleston was especially attracted to her desire to highlight the vulnerability of the characters, all of whom present an exterior that is vastly different than their interior life.

“Every character’s heart is on fire in some way, and they all have different masks to conceal that,” Hiddleston says. “But Georgi kept wanting to get underneath it, to excavate it. Explore the fire, explore the trauma. She came in and said, ‘This show is about identity.’ ”

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“I’m fascinated with how the line of identity and where you sit in the world is very fragile,” Banks-Davies says. “I’m fascinated by the strain on that line. In the heart of the show, that was so clearly there. I’m also always searching for what brings us together in a time, particularly in the last 10 years, that’s ever more divisive. These characters are all at war with each other. They’re all lying to each other. They’re deceiving each other for what they want. But what brings them together … instead of pushes them apart?”

The new season opens four years after the events of Season 1 as Jonathan and Angela meet in Syria. There, she identifies the dead body of Roper — a reveal that suggests his character won’t really be part of Season 2. After his death, Pine settles into a requisite life in London as Alex Goodwin, a member of an unexciting intelligence unit called the Night Owls.

A woman in a blue shirt and light colored hoodie looks intently at a man in a white shirt sitting across from her.

Angela (Olivia Colman) and Jonathan (Tom Hiddleston) meet in Syria, four years after the events of Season 1.

(Des Willie / Prime Video)

“He’s half asleep and he lacks clarity and definition,” Hiddleston says. “His meaning and purpose have been blunted and dulled. He is only alive at his greatest peril, and the closer his feet are to the fire, the more he feels like himself. He’s addicted to risk, but also courageous in chasing down the truth.”

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That first episode is a clever fake-out. Soon, Jonathan is on the trail of a conspiracy in Colombia, where the British government appears to be involved in an arms deal with Teddy. It quickly becomes the globe-trotting, thrill-seeking show that captivated fans in Season 1. There are new characters, including Sally (Hayley Squires), Jonathan’s Night Owls’ partner, and Roxana Bolaños (Camila Morrone), a young shipping magnate in league with Teddy, and vibrant locations. Jonathan infiltrates Teddy’s organization, posing as a cavalier, rich businessman named Matthew Ellis. He believes Teddy is the real threat. But in the final moments of Episode 3 there’s another gut-punching fake-out: Roper lives.

“The idea was: We must do the classic thing that stories do, which is to lose the father in order that he must appear again,” Farr says. He confirms there was never an intention to make “The Night Manager” Season 2 without Laurie. “What makes it work is this feeling that you are off on something completely new,” Farr says. “But that’s not what I want this show to be.”

Hiddleston compares it to the tale of St. George and the dragon. “They define each other,” he says. “At the end of the first series, Jonathan Pine delivers the dragon of Richard Roper to his captors. But after that, he is lost. The dragon slayer is lost without the presence of the dragon to define him. And, similarly, Roper is obsessed with Pine.”

Jonathan realizes the truth as he sneaks up to a hilltop restaurant to listen in on a meeting. Banks-Davies opted to shoot the entire series on location, and she kept a taut, quick pace during filming because she wanted the cast to feel the tension all the way through. She and Hiddleston had a shared motto on set: “There’s no time for unreal.” Thanks to her careful scene-setting, Roper’s arrival and Jonathan’s reaction were shot in only 10 minutes.

“I felt everything we talked about for months and everything we’d shot up until that point and everything we’d been through was in that moment,” Banks-Davies says. “There are so many emotions going on, so much being expressed, and it’s just delivered like that. But it was hard to get us there.”

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Farr adds, “It is the most important moment in the show in terms of everything that then follows on from that.” He wrote into the script that Roper’s voice would be heard before Laurie was seen on camera. “It’s more frightening when something is not instantly fully understood and seen,” he says. “You hear it and you think, ‘Oh, God, I know that [voice].’ ”

Hiddleston wanted to play a range of emotions in seconds. He describes it as a “moment of total vitality.” Right before the cameras rolled, Banks-Davies told Hiddleston, “The dragon is alive.”

“After all the work, that’s all I needed to hear,” he says. “This moment will be memorable to him and he’ll be able to recall it in his mind for the rest of his life. He is wide awake, and reality is re-forming around him. His sense of the last 10 years, his sense of what he can trust and who he can trust, the way he’s tried to evolve his own identity — the sky is falling. There is a mixture of shock, grief, disenchantment, disillusionment, surprise and perhaps even relief.”

As soon as Jonathan arrives in Colombia and meets Teddy, a calculating live-wire dealing with his own sense of isolation, he becomes more himself. Hiddleston expresses him as a character desperate to feel the edge. Despite his layered duplicity, Jonathan understands and defines himself by courting risk.

A man in a tan suit, a man in a blue suit and a woman in a white suit stand near a waterway, with towers and a car behind.
A woman in a blue dress presses against the back of a man in white, who is being held at the hips by a man in a mesh shirt.

Teddy (Diego Calva), Jonathan (Tom Hiddleston) and Roxana (Camila Marrone) get close. “This is a character who pushes his body to the limit and sacrifices enormous parts of himself at great personal cost to his body and soul,” Hiddleston says of Jonathan. (Des Willie/Prime Video)

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“This is a character who pushes his body to the limit and sacrifices enormous parts of himself at great personal cost to his body and soul,” Hiddleston says. “He goes through a lot of pain, but also there’s great courage and resilience and enormous vulnerability. That’s what I relish the most, these are heightened scenarios that don’t arise as readily and in my ordinary life.”

“I could feel that shooting moments like this,” Banks-Davies adds. “Like, ‘It’s right there. Are we going to get it?’ Our whole show exists in that space between safety and death.”

Roper’s presence sends a ripple effect across the remaining three episodes. As much as Jonathan and Teddy are in opposition, they are parallel spirits, both with complicated relationships to Roper. Hiddleston describes them as “a mirror to each other,” although they can’t quite figure out what to be to each other. And neither knows who the other person really is.

“It is interesting, isn’t it, that my first image of him was 7 years old and that stays in him all the way through,” Farr says. “This sense of this boy who is seeking something — an affirmation, a place in the world. And he’s done terrible things, as he says to Pine in Episode 3. All of that was present in that first image I had.”

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Hiddleston adds, “There is a competition, too, because Roper is the father figure, and they both need him in very different ways. Teddy is a new kind of adversary because he’s a contemporary. He’s got this resourcefulness and this ruthlessness, but also this very open vulnerability, which he uses as a weapon. They recognize each other and see each other.”

The characters’ dynamic is at the root of what drew Banks-Davies to the series. “It’s not about where they were born, it’s not about their economic status or their religion or their cultural identity,” she says. “It’s about two men who are lost and alone and solitary, and see a kinship in that. They are pulled together on this journey.”

Season 2, which will release episodes weekly after the first drop, will lead directly into Season 3, although no one involved will spill on when it can be expected. Hopefully they will arrive in less than a decade.

“It won’t be as long, I promise,” Farr says. “I can’t tell you exactly when, because I don’t know. But definitely nowhere as long.”

“That was the thrill for us, of knowing that when we began to tell this story, we knew we had 12 episodes to tell it inside, rather than just six,” Hiddleston says. “So we can be slightly braver and more rebellious and more complex in the architecture of that narrative. And not everything has to be tied up neatly in a bow. There’s still miles to go before we sleep, to borrow from Robert Frost, and that’s exciting. It’s exciting for how this season ends, and it’s exciting for where we go next.”

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Movie Reviews

MOVIE REVIEWS: “Mercy,” “Return to Silent Hill,” “Sentimental Value” & “In Cold Light” – Valdosta Daily Times

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MOVIE REVIEWS: “Mercy,” “Return to Silent Hill,” “Sentimental Value” & “In Cold Light” – Valdosta Daily Times

“Mercy”

(Thriller/Crime: 1 hour, 39 minutes)

Starring: Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis

Director: Timur Bekmambetov

Rated: PG-13 (Violence, bloody images, strong language, drug content and teen smoking)

Movie Review:

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“Mercy” is a science fiction movie based on one of the more common themes of moviedom lately, artificial intelligence (AI). This crime thriller cleverly creates an intriguing story using technology and the justice system, yet it fails to be consistently interesting and intelligent throughout. The conclusion is less significant than the initial setup, as the concluding scenes become typical action sequences.

Detective Chris Raven (Pratt) of the LA Police Department is a huge supporter of the city’s new judicial courtroom. Crimes are now judged by an AI program (Ferguson) in the Mercy Court. The court is run by an artificial program that makes decisions based on all of the evidence before it without any prejudice. Detective Raven is all for this system until he is convicted of killing his wife. Now he must use all of the data, including the AI‘s ability to tap into everyone’s electronic devices, security cameras, and even into government files, within reason, to prove he did not murder his wife.

Mercy is an interesting movie. It entertains throughout, even when the story gets sloppy and characters’ actions are irrational. This mainly occurs during the final scenes. The movie tries too hard to insert unneeded narrative twists. This is disappointing because the story is interesting. What makes it fascinating is that it happens in real time. This is the most brilliant facet.

All the other theatrics are unnecessary. Director Timur Bekmambetov (“Profile,” 2018; “Wanted,” 2008) and “Mercy’s” producers should have just kept the ending simple, no plot twists or superfluous action sequences.
Grade: C (This flick needs some mercy. Let the trial begin.)

“Return to Silent Hill”

(Horror: 1 hour, 46 minutes)

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Starring: Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson and Robert Strange

Director: Christophe Gans

Rated: R (Bloody violent content, strong language and brief drug use.)

Movie Review:

“Return to Silent Hill” is about one man’s quest to return to the love of his life. The problem is she has moved on to the afterlife. Meanwhile, audiences lose part of their life watching this movie, which is unlike any of the two prequels in this series. This one is a psychological horror that bores.

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Artist James Sunderland (Irvine) decides to return to Silent Hill, a place where many people died during a devastating illness that nearly enveloped the entirety of the city’s population. What is left there is a horror show of freakish creatures, all with violent intent. Still, Sunderland searches for the love of his life, Mary Crane (Anderson).

Think of this movie as a slow suicide, where a guy goes back to retrieve his dead girlfriend. To do so, he must travel to the modern land of the dead that Silent Hill has become. This one is a type of swan song by the main character, and the movie becomes less scary while lackluster romantic notions wander aimlessly.

Grade: D (Do not return to see this.)

“Sentimental Value”

(Drama: 2 hours, 13 minutes)

Starring: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning

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Director: Joachim Trier

Rated: R (Language, sexual reference, nudity and thematic elements)

Movie Review:

“Sentimental Value” is a Norwegian film that won the Grand Prix in France’s Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Motion Picture. It is a solid drama filled with symbolism and family connections. It is brilliant performances by a talented cast under the direction of Joachim Trier (“The Worst Person in the World,” 2021).

This screenplay is about Gustav Borg (Skarsgård). He is a father, grandfather and a famed film director. He stayed away from his two daughters, actress Nora Borgwhile (Reinsve) and historian Agnes Borg Pettersen (Lilleaas), while he was creating works as a filmmaker. The director comes back into the lives of his daughters after the death of their mother. Their reunion leads to a rediscovery of their bond at their family home in Oslo.

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Stellan Skarsgård is always a solid actor. He takes his roles and makes them tangible characters that seem like you know them, even when they’re speaking a foreign language. That is the quality of his act and why he gets nominated for multiple awards each season.

“Sentimental Value” is a valuable movie filled with enriching sentiment. It is an enjoyable film for those who value a good drama. The acting and original writing alone make the movie worth it. “Sentimental Value” starts in a very simple way, but everything in between, even when low-key, remains potent. Joachim Trier and writer Eskil Vogt have worked together on multiple projects such as “The Worst Person in the World” (2021). Their pairing is once again worthy.

Grade: A- (Any motive valuable movie.)

“In Cold Light ”

(Crime: 1 hour , 36 minutes)

Starring: Maika Monroe, Allan Hawco and Troy Kotsur

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Director: Maxime Giroux

Rated: R (Violence, bloody images, strong language and drug material)

Movie Review:

“In Cold Light” sticks to a very straightforward story, primarily taking place over a short period. The problem is the story leaves one in the cold. Audiences have to guess what is being communicated because this movie uses American Sign Language (ASL) without subtitles. For those moviegoers who do not know ASL, they are left deciphering characters’ actions and facial expressions during some pivotal scenes.

Ava Bly (Monroe) attempts to start a legit life after prison. Her life changes when Ava’s twin, Tom Bly (Jesse Irving) is murdered while seated next to her. As her brother’s killers pursue her, Ava must evade law enforcement, which contains some crooked cops led by Bob Whyte (Hawco).

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For a brief moment, this movie hits its exceptional moment when Oscar-recipient Helen Hunt enters the picture as a motherly Claire, a crime boss who seems more like a social worker/psychologist. Her long scene is wasted as it arrives too late.

French Canadian director Maxime Giroux’s style has potential in his first English-language film, but it does not fit a wayward narrative. A rarity, this crime drama has characters commit many dumb actions at once.

Moreover, Giroux (“Félix et Meira,” 2014) and writer Patrick Whistler forget to let their audiences in on their story. They allow much to get lost in translation, especially during heated conversations between Monroe’s Ava and her father, Will Bly, played by Academy Award-winning actor Troy Kotsur (“CODA,” 2021).

Grade: C- (Just cold and dark.)

More movie reviews online at www.valdostadailytimes.com.

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Paramount-Warner Bros. deal stirs fears about what it means for CNN

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Paramount-Warner Bros. deal stirs fears about what it means for CNN

As the media industry took stock of Paramount Skydance’s startling acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, one question lingered on the minds of many in the news business and beyond: What will this mean for CNN?

The iconic 24-hour cable news network is among the various Warner Bros. assets that would be scooped up by Paramount in a deal announced Thursday that could transform the media landscape.

Paramount has undergone a swift transformation under Chief Executive David Ellison following his family’s acquisition of the company last summer. These changes reached CBS News almost immediately with the appointment of Bari Weiss, the controversial Free Press co-founder, as its new editor in chief.

Bari Weiss moderated a town hall with Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

(CBS via Getty Images)

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Weiss’ tenure so far has been rocky.

Her decision to pull a “60 Minutes” story about conditions inside an El Salvador prison that housed undocumented Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. received widespread criticism and accusations of political motivation. The network said the story was held for more reporting, and the segment eventually aired.

There was more upheaval last week at the news magazine, when “60 Minutes” correspondent and CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper announced that he’d be leaving to spend more time with his family.

And earlier this year, a veteran producer at “CBS Evening News With Tony Dokoupil” was fired after he expressed disagreement about the editorial direction of the newscast.

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Now, the concern is that similar changes could be in store for CNN, which has long been a target of President Trump’s ire. He has personally called for the ouster of hosts at the network who have questioned his policies.

CNN Worldwide Chief Executive Mark Thompson tried to quell some of those fears, particularly inside his own newsroom.

In an internal memo dated Thursday and obtained by The Times, Thompson urged employees not to “jump to conclusions about the future” and try to concentrate on their work.

“We’re still near the start of what is already an incredibly newsy year at home and abroad,” he wrote in the note. “Let’s continue to focus on delivering the best possible journalism to the millions of people who rely on us all around the world.”

Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson and media editor for Semafor, Maxwell Tani, speak onstage.

Chairman and CEO of CNN Worldwide Mark Thompson and media editor for Semafor, Maxwell Tani, speak onstage.

(Shannon Finney / Getty Images for Semafor)

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CNN declined to comment beyond Thompson’s memo.

Ellison has said his vision for a news business is one that is ideologically down the middle.

“We want to build a scaled news service that is basically, fundamentally in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle,” he said during a Dec. 8 interview on CNBC, shortly after Warner said it had chosen Netflix as the winning bidder for its studios, HBO and HBO Max. “And we believe that by doing so that is for us, kind of doing well, while doing good.”

Ellison demurred when asked whether Trump would embrace him as CNN’s owner, given the president’s past criticisms of the network.

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“We’ve had great conversations with the president about this, but … I don’t want to speak for him in any way, shape or form,” he said.

First Amendment scholars have raised concerns about press freedom and free speech rights under the Trump administration, particularly after last month’s arrest of former CNN journalist Don Lemon and the Federal Communications Commission’s pressure on late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

Press freedom groups have long asked questions in other countries about how authoritarian regimes use their power and “oligarchical alliances to belittle, silence, and punish independent journalistic voices, or to steer media ownership toward … a preferred version of the truth,” said RonNell Andersen Jones, a 1st Amendment scholar and distinguished professor in the college of law at the University of Utah, in an email.

“We see them asking at least some of these questions about the U.S. today,” she wrote.

Apprehension about the merger also extends beyond its implications for CNN and the media business.

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Lawmakers such as Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have raised concerns about how the consolidation of two major Hollywood studios could affect industry jobs and film and television production — which has significantly slowed since the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 and corporate cutbacks in spending.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the deal an “antitrust disaster” that she feared could raise prices and limit choices for consumers.

“With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law,” she said in a statement.

Already, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has said the merger isn’t a “done deal,” adding that he is in communication with other states attorneys general about the issue.

“As the epicenter of the entertainment industry, California has a special interest in protecting competition,” he posted Friday on X.

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The deal is subject to approval by the U.S. Justice Department. Bonta and other state attorneys general are expected to file a legal challenge to the mega-merger on antitrust grounds.

Ellison addressed some of these concerns in a statement Friday.

“By bringing together these world-class studios, our complementary streaming platforms, and the extraordinary talent behind them, we will create even greater value for audiences, partners and shareholders,” he said. “We couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”

Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.

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Movie Review: ‘Goat’ – Catholic Review

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Movie Review: ‘Goat’ – Catholic Review

NEW YORK (OSV News) – “Goat” (Sony) is an animated underdog sports comedy populated by anthropomorphized animals. While mostly inoffensive, and thus suitable for a wide audience — including teens and older kids — the film is also easily forgotten.

The amiable proceedings center on teen goat Will Harris (voice of Caleb McLaughlin). As opening scenes show, it has been Will’s dream since childhood to play for his hometown team, the Vineland Thorns.

The inhabitants of Vineland and the other areas of the movie’s world, however, are divided into so-called bigs and smalls, with professional competition dominated, unsurprisingly, by the former. Though Will stoutly maintains that he’s a medium, those around him regard him as too slight and diminutive to go up against the towering bigs.

Despite this prejudice, a video showing Will more or less holding his own against a famous and arrogant big, Andalusian horse Mane Attraction (voice of Aaron Pierre), goes viral and inspires the Thorns’ devious owner, warthog Flo Everson (voiced by Jenifer Lewis), to give the lad a shot. Though Will is understandably thrilled, his path forward proves challenging.

Will has idolized the Thorns’ sole outstanding player, black panther Jett Fillmore (voice of Gabrielle Union), since he was a youngster. But Jett, it turns out, is not only frustrated by her situation as a star among misfits but scornful of Will’s ambitions and resolute in helping to deprive her new teammate of playing time.

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Given such divisions, the Thorns’ fortunes seem destined to continue their long decline.

“Roarball,” the invented game featured in director Tyree Dillihay’s film, is essentially co-ed basketball by another name. As produced by, among others, NBA champion Stephen Curry, the movie — adapted from an idea in Chris Tougas’ book “Funky Dunks” — is an unabashed celebration of hoop culture both on and off the court.

Viewers’ enthusiasm may vary, accordingly, depending on the degree to which they’re invested in the real-life sport.

Moviegoers of every stripe will appreciate the fact that the script, penned by Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley, shows the negative effects of self-centeredness as well as the value of teamwork and fan support. Plot developments also showcase forgiveness and reconciliation.

Will’s story is, nonetheless, thoroughly formulaic and most of the screenplay’s jokes feel strained and laborious. Still, while hardly qualifying as the Greatest of All Time, “Goat” does provide passable entertainment with little besides a few potty gags to concern parents.

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The film contains brief scatological humor and at least one vaguely crass term. The OSV News classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG — parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

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