The first rule about Goat is you do not talk about Goat.
The second rule about Goat is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT GOAT.
The third rule about Goat is if someone says “stop” or goes limp, taps out, the Goat is over
4th rule: Only two guys to a Goat
5th rule: One Goat at a time, fellas
The sixth rule of Goat is no shirts, no pants, no shoes
Seventh rule: Goats will go on as long as they have to
And the final rule of Goat is: if this is your first night at Goat, you have to Goat.
Fraternities, I mean, amiright? I once got into a hilarious conversation with my cousin’s boyfriend (eventually her husband), who was this rich douchebag that was in a fraternity. He kept telling me that the parties were the perks, and the community service was the real reason he joined a fraternity. I laughed in his face and went to get another drink.
The thing is, we all know there are multiple reasons for fraternities. The first is the whole party and brotherhood aspect. It’s amazing to have a group of friends who know how to throw great parties and chip in for a lot of booze. There’s also an aspect of belonging to something larger than yourself, and having a secret network of people around the country you can depend on. But, there’s also that proof that you can prove yourself worthy, show that you’re man enough, to belong to a group of these “alpha” males.
My roommate in college pledged a fraternity. During his hell week, he was kidnapped and forced to drink a shitton of booze (among other things). One night, he was so wasted that he ended up trying to water the carpet because it had flowers. I’m surprised he didn’t have alcohol poisoning. While I was in college, one fraternity was put on probation because they accidentally shot a pledge in the nuts with an air rifle. Apparently, one of the BBs had lodged in somewhere after they had emptied the gun. They had these numbnuts out in the snow in their underwear and were shooting this “empty” air rifle into their crotches. The BB dislodged itself, and the nuts were lost.
This adaptation of Brad Land’s 2004 memoir Goat has nothing like that. This is more like the first act of Fight Club where bored men try to prove themselves worthy by submitting to stupid shit in order to prove their strength. Actually, it’s worse than that. It’s what you get when a finger-wagging nag directs the first act of fight club without letting you have fun in with it.
Before college even starts, Brad Land (Ben Schnetzer) is a goody two shoes who won’t even do cocaine and watch two girls make out for the entertainment of a bunch of guys at some house party. Instead, when he leaves the party, two strangers ask him for a ride home. They take him into the woods and horrifically beat the shit out of him before stealing his car and wallet. His confidence now shattered and destroyed, he sets out to prove something to his older brother Brett (Nick Jonas) by joining Brett’s fraternity in the fall.
The hazing that follows is occasionally hot homoerotic humiliation fetish softcore porno with a special callout for the sploshing freaks out there. Do you like cute young boys mud wrestling each other in their underwear? Do you want to see one of them get locked in a cage and then peed on by another hot alpha male? How about passing wet uncooked hot dogs down a chain using only their mouths? What about guys splashing foot on each other? Or guys doing jumping jacks for other guys’ entertainment? Do you want it with more than a bit of homophobic name calling, just to prove how no homo this all is? I mean, there’s porn out there with all of this in it, but that porn doesn’t star Nick Jonas, Jake Picking, or Austin Lyon. Plus, this comes with the added bonus of not having any actual gay sex and no full frontal nudity so you don’t have to actually hide it from your family!
Director Andrew Neel really wants you to think about how men can commit gross inhumane actions when trapped in rooms with one another. He wants you to think of Abu Ghraib or the Stanford Prison Experiment. But, he doesn’t want to indict the audience. Nor does he want to think outside the box. Sure we have Brad’s story about why he joined a fraternity, but not Brett’s. We don’t get anybody else’s reason for being in one, but we get all the finger wagging we can handle. We’re not supposed to enjoy the spectacle, Neel nags. We’re supposed to be horrified that the fraternity traps a group of kids in a barn and gives them three hours to tap a keg of beer. We’re supposed to be horrified that they blindfold a pledge and stuff his head in a toilet to make him eat a turd, which is really a banana. It’s so OUT OF CONTROL.
But, it’s so slow and ponderous that it also never indicts the audience. Much of my time watching Goat was like Milhouse wondering when we were going to get to the fireworks factory. Where was all the dark stuff I was promised? I mean, yeah, somebody dies, but not even in a spectacular way. There’s no real horror in it. That’s what Goat lacks: titillation and horror. That is, titillation that curdles into horror. We know that things will get bad, but do we have to be bored while we learn our lesson? There’s a better movie to be made out of fraternity hijinks. This isn’t it.