Goats Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Goats Blu-ray Movie Review

Maturity Interruptus

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 9, 2012

Goats presents the odd experience of a coming-of-age tale in which the youthful protagonist doesn't grow up. He has new experiences, makes new acquaintances and reevaluates some old ones, but he doesn't acquire new insight into life. At the end of the film, he doesn't seem any different than at the beginning. It's as if Holden Caufield had concluded his famous tale by pronouncing that the figure of the "catcher in the rye" he'd envisioned as his ideal was, like so many others in his life, a phony.

Goats is the second film scripted by Mark Poirier, whose first work, Smart People (2008), was written directly for the screen. Here Poirier adapted his own novel, and both he and director Christopher Neil may have been aiming for something like the whimsically detached tone of which Wes Anderson is the undisputed king. But Poirier is a satirist by nature (as demonstrated by Smart People), and few directors have Anderson's gift for treating outlandish characters humorously but with generosity and affection.

First-time director Neil is a member of the extended Coppola clan. He has worked as an acting and dialogue coach and rehearsal advisor on numerous films for Francis Ford (including The Rainmaker), Roman (CQ) and Sofia Coppla (most recently, Somewhere) as well as for Sofia's ex-husband, Spike Jonze (Adaptation) and, on Francis Coppola's recommendation, George Lucas (Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith). His connections and experience attracted a stellar cast and elicited fine performances, but Neil never seems to find a point of view for the movie. In the absence of anything else, the young protagonist's disillusionment with everyone and everything he encounters fills the vacuum, and that's all Neil and Poirier have to offer in Goats.

Goats is the story of fifteen-year-old Ellis (Graham Phillips, The Good Wife), a child of divorce, who lives outside of Tucson, Arizona, with his mother, Wendy (Vera Farmiga), an emotional cripple whose self-absorption is matched only by her hatred for Ellis' father, Frank (Ty Burrell of Modern Family). Frank left when Ellis was a baby, and ever since he has always been known in Wendy's household by the official name of "Fucking Frank". Ellis handles all of Wendy's finances and other practical matters, as she moves from one New Age pursuit to another and one boyfriend to another, of which the current representative is a slimeball named Bennet (Justin Kirk).

Ellis' surrogate father is the stoner he calls Goat Man (David Duchovny), although he's sometimes known as "Javier", which isn't his real name either. Goat Man lives in Wendy's pool house, keeps goats, grows first-rate weed and takes Ellis on long treks without a fixed destination through the picturesque desert. Goat Man's "wisdom" alternates between fortune cookie platitudes and strategic silences, and his full beard and unkempt locks give him the look of a homeless man, but he seems to care genuinely for Ellis, which is more than can be said of Wendy, who uses the kid as an emotional prop.

At the moment, the household is unsettled, because Ellis has decided to go east to attend Gates, the traditional prep school from which his father graduated. Wendy is appalled, but it's clear that Ellis has been making his own decisions for years. Goat Man promises to send Ellis weed, but is dissuaded from doing so by Jonathan the Mailman (Geoff Ellsworth), who says it isn't worth the risk.

Despite the dramatic change in environment, Ellis settles easily into Gates, probably because, unlike most new arrivals, he's used to fending for himself. Also, unlike most students, including his roommate, Barney (Nicholas Lobue), Ellis doesn't feel the weight of parental pressure to succeed, so that he's free to apply his natural aptitudes where his interests take him. He excels in school work, but has no desire to participate in sports—that is, until the school's aggressive track coach (Anthony Anderson) catches him smoking a joint in the neighboring woods and blackmails him into joining the team. (He ends up excelling there too.) If Ellis needs help, as he does at one point, there's always his father's former roommate, Dr. Eldridge (Alan Ruck), who's now a teacher at Gates.

The real revelations for Ellis come when his father sends him a ticket to visit Frank in Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving. Having made a fortune in retail, Frank is now remarried to Judy (Keri Russell), who is pregnant with Ellis' half-brother. Frank wants to reestablish a relationship, and Ellis is suspicious, but he's also curious. The trip is rocky but promising, and when Frank later turns up at Gates, Ellis seems receptive. By the time Ellis returns to Tucson for a visit, he is already seeing Wendy, Goat Man and even the neighbor girl, Aubrey (Adelaide Kane), on whom he had a crush, in a new and harsher light.

But seeing the flaws in his Tucson crowd doesn't give Ellis wisdom; it just makes him more judgmental. The most promising relationship in Goats is between Ellis and Minnie (Dakota Johnson), a "townie" girl who does menial work at Gates but slips into the library to read when no one is looking. She and Ellis connect over great books, when she recommends The Great Gatsby and To Kill a Mockingbird, and Minnie helps him when he's injured in an incident in town. And yet Ellis rejects her without hesitation when Minnie indicates that she's interested in something more. Why? To start with, she's female, and everything Ellis has seen of women, starting with Wendy, makes him mistrust them. More significantly, Minnie is rumored to provide sexual favors to upperclassmen for money. It's probably a false rumor engendered by the hormonal hothouse of an all-boys' prep school, but it's enough to push Ellis away. Such is the "growth" that Goats portrays.

The best thing the film has going for it is the gorgeous scenery against which these characters play out their eccentricities. Arizona and New Mexico provided the western locations, and the Sonoran desert and rock-strewn mountains convey the full magnitude of what drew Wendy and Goat Man to the locale. The eastern settings used for the Gates Academy and its environs could serve as a solicitation for high-end donors and as a reassurance for parents that they're sending their sons to paradise. The beauty of the settings only serves to highlight the pettiness of the behavior that goes on there.

Goats Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Goats was shot with the Alexa digital camera, a competitor to the Red One developed by Arri. The cinematographer was Wyatt Troll, who has shot music videos and shorts for Spike Jonze and others. Whatever reservations I have about the film's content, there are none about the video quality of Image Entertainment's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray. The resolution, clarity and detail of the imagery is simply stunning. Combined with the wonderful locations, the colorful, noise-free picture gives you something interesting to look at during moments when the film's dramatic pace slackens. The Alexa is especially noted for the subtlety of its color delineation, and in Goats (no doubt with some assistance from the digital intermediate colorist), it does a fine job of differentiating the warm southwestern colors from the overall cooler tonality of the eastern environment, with its blue blazers and white dorm walls. Blacks are true, fleshtones are natural, and since the entire path from capture to Blu-ray is digital, of course there are no analog issues of filtering or sharpening to be reckoned with. Even with extras, the total amount of material on the disc doesn't exceed two hours, and a BD-25 accommodates everything without compression issues.

Goats Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD MA 5.1 track is dominated by dialogue, but the rear channels provide ambiance and atmosphere and sometimes engage with specific effects. A notable example occurs when Goat Man drops off Ellis at the airport, and routine announcements can be heard to the rear left or right, depending on the perspective of the scene ("The white zone is for immediately loading and unloading", etc.). It's an interesting effect, because it pulls attention away from the screen, which is right for the scene, as Ellis and Goat Man are being pressured to speed up their farewell, but it also serves as a reminder that such rear channel effects should be used sparingly.

Dialogue is clear and natural sounding. The generally spare score has been supplied by Jason Schwartzman (another Coppola family member) and Woody Jackson.

Goats Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 1:18): There are two brief scenes, one between Goat Man and Aubrey, and another between Ellis and two society ladies.


• Moments: The Making of Goats (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1 & 2.35:1; 10:37): This featurette edits together moments from the set and locations, accompanied by selections from the soundtrack. It's more a scrapbook than a "making of".


• The Mailman's Lament (HD, 1080p; 1.78:1; 2:29): Set to a still photograph of Goat Man and Jonathan the Mailman and a reggae beat, Jonathan delivers a monologue on the mailman's lot in life.


• Home Movies (SD; 1.33:1; 2:50): These are the full versions of the home movies that play during the credits, showing Goat Man and Wendy playing with an infant Ellis.


• Theatrical Trailer (HD, 1080p; 2.35:1; 2:15): As is often the case, the trailer gives the illusion of a more coherent story than the movie actually provides.

Goats Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

On its technical merits, I have no problem recommending the Blu-ray of Goats, but it's not a film I would suggest everyone run out and buy. Duchovny fans who have enjoyed his work in Californication may find it interesting to see him play someone who genuinely doesn't care, and Ty Burrell gives a wonderfully restrained and nuanced performance of a father struggling to find his way back to a son he knows he abandoned. Farmiga obviously had fun playing a goofball, and Phillips aptly captures Ellis' adolescent bitterness. What these actors needed was a script that added up and a director who could put them into the same movie.