GOAT movie review: Stephen Curry’s animated sports saga is more noise than game | Movie-review News
3 min readFeb 20, 2026 06:00 PM IST
GOAT movie review: “The small guy with the skinny arms.” If Steph Curry had to overcome these “handicaps” to become one of basketball’s greatest (the fact that he is over 6 ft tall tells you a lot about the game), it’s not a surprise that he would attach his name as a producer and actor to GOAT.
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The film, starring anthropomorphic animals who are crazy about a basketball-like game called roar ball, has at its heart a goat called Will (McLaughlin), who wants to be one of the greatest.
But, quite like Curry, in a game dominated by the tall or the mighty or the weird (a giraffe, black panther, horses, a rhino, an ostrich, a Komodo dragon, a proboscis monkey, a warthog, among others), Will is laughed at for thinking that him being part of a legendary team such as the Thorns is possible.
However, Will has determination and a childhood hero, Jett (Union), who is among the game’s greatest, to keep him motivated.
Once he has made his way into the Thorns, led by Jett, GOAT trudges the regular sports film course of rejection, acceptance, coming together as a team, stepping up at the right moment, and recognising that it is time to call it quits.
The voice talent is excellent (including Curry as the giraffe in a sardonic touch, as well as Harbour, Lewis and Hudson), which is the best thing about this film, which is too loud, too frenzied, too pyrotechnics-obsessed to blinding and deafening effect.
The roar ball courts are battlegrounds, not just metaphorically but literally, with stalactites dropping into them from the stadium roof or lava bursting out from the stadium floor… and that’s just two of the many special effects.
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The animals are nasty and mean to their rival teams and often physically aggressive.
And the creatures are always, always on their phones and particularly social media, following reels or making them.
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So what is GOAT aiming to be? A film for children about dreaming big or a film for adults about aiming big?
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The confusion is apparent. When they say ‘leave it all out in court’, it does not mean all this much.
GOAT movie director: Tyree Dillihay, Adam Rosette
GOAT movie voice cast: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Stephen Curry, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlan, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, Jenifer Lewis, Jennifer Hudson
GOAT movie rating: 2 stars
