Certain sports film formulas are formulas for a reason. There’s the story of the underdog who defies all odds (Rocky), the story of the aging veteran who beats back father time (The Wrestler), the story of a plucky athlete with outsized ambition no one respects (Marty Supreme), and the story of a team with no budget that scraps together their resources in surprisingly effective ways (Moneyball). GOAT uses them all. A movie that has no shortage of pre-chewed clichés probably shouldn’t work, and yet, it resoundingly does. Tyree Dillihay’s directorial debut is a really effective, stunningly animated, inspiring success. Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley’s script, run-of-the-mill it may be at times, knows exactly how to plug-and-play certain established tenants of the heartwarming sports film. It does so with just enough innovation to make it its own. These are filmmakers who understand the appeal of the sports world’s cogent poetics, in which binary heroes and villains, uncommon ambition and relentless work ethic all coalesce into a physical art form that is broadly appealing. GOAT may not upend what a sports film can do, but it does reinforce why we keep returning to the court season after season.
GOAT’s Unique Qualities and Emphasis on Diversity Paper Over Its Clichés

GOAT is hard to separate from the identity of Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warriors’ surefire Hall-of-Famer who serves as a producer and as a voice actor. Centered as it is on Will Harris (Stranger Things’ Caleb McLaughlin), a diminutive 5’7 teenage goat with a sweet outside jumpshot whom everyone dismisses on the simple basis of his size, GOAT feels a little like a self-congratulatory portrait. But the roots run deeper than that, and, ultimately, the film is less about one ballplayer’s ability than the ripple effect of allowing diversity into the world of sports. Will is a roarball-obsessed kid whose lifelong love of his hometown team, the Vineland Thorns, has put him on an inextinguishable quest to become the first “small” to play in the big leagues. Roarball is for all intents and purposes, the same thing as basketball, except that it is played by a variety of the animal kingdom’s largest species on geologically-specific courts. The Thorns play in a greenhouse where overflowing vines, flora and fauna creep onto the court; the team’s central rival, the Magma, play atop an active volcano; the Shivers play on a frozen tundra, and so on. In terms of world-building, this isn’t much different than Zootopia. Will is so obsessed with his dream that the constant epithets he gets at the local courts about his stature never bother him. He is also so devoted to his dream that he is far behind on his bills, barely getting by as a delivery driver for a local diner where his mother used to work. In the early stages of GOAT, Dillihay spends an inordinate, and frustrating, amount of time on social media and adult problems like financial insecurity, both of which are distracting and feel out of place for a children’s movie. But, one day at the street court affectionately called The Cage (think Rucker Park), Will finds himself challenging the league’s most arrogant player, Mane (Aaron Pierre). A massive horse with luscious hair, he immediately dismisses the “small” until he realizes that everyone in the crowd has their smartphone fixated on him, and the two play a game of 1-on-1 to 3. Though Will (barely) loses, his friends Hannah and Daryl (Sherry Cola and Eduardo Franco, respectively), turn his game into a highlight reel that immediately goes viral. The timing is auspicious. The Thorns best player, and arguably the greatest roarball player of all time, Jett Filmore (Gabrielle Union), is having trouble carrying the bottom-feeding team by herself, and undoubtedly villainous, money-obsessed owner Flo (Jenifer Lewis) sees an opportunity to satisfy both her diva star player and her wallet. Thus, a huge splash is made when the team signs the unknown Will to a big league contract. Much of the film’s second act plays like a thousand other sports films, which can be tedious. It is especially so because much of the ire that Jett feels towards her new teammate feels decidedly unearned. The writers seem pulled between wanting to paint her as a LeBron James-like superstar and an Allen Iverson-like one-man-band. Her characterization is constantly contradicting itself. But, the other players are fun and appreciably distinct. Archie (David Harbour), a rhinoceros single father of two, is the team’s bruising paint protector; Olivia (Nicola Coughlan) is an ostrich whose speed is only matched by her love of glam; Lenny (ironically played by Curry), is a massive giraffe whose journeyman career has pushed him into a side career as a rap artist; and Modo Olachenko (Nick Kroll) is a Komodo Dragon in the personality-hire vein of Ron Artest or Dennis Rodman. Watching this band of misfits climb their way into playoff contention is conventional but deeply satisfying.

Dilllihay makes the genuinely progressive implication that if ball is ball, then all belong, and that our courts and fields and rings should not be discriminatory.

Kroll is especially hilarious as the Russian-accented wildcard, but it is the entire film’s ethos around gender and sexuality that is its most delightfully surprising aspect. This is a sports league where the best player is a woman and the team’s defensive specialist is clearly coded as bisexual, but never in a way that would seem inappropriate inside a kid’s film. Without ever pointing to either scenario, Dilllihay makes the genuinely progressive implication that if ball is ball, then all belong, and that our courts and fields and rings should not be discriminatory. That’s an especially needed message when queer, trans and non-white athletes are being villainized.

Which is ultimately the lovely, if overly simple, message of GOAT. The way in which most of the league and the media refer to Will is reminiscent of the way any trailblazer in the history of sports has been referred to. They try to define him by what he lacks, or what is immediately recognizable about him, and he has to push forward to prove that he is bigger than meets the eye. It seems like the kind of journey that Jett probably had to take herself, in a different film. Thus, GOAT hits home. Or, if you prefer, it nails the buzzer-beater. The filming of the roarball scenes is electric, the humor is silly and sweet, and the movie is packed to the gills with inside basketball references: Michael Jordan’s Flu Game in June 1997, Paul Pierce’s Wheelchair Game in Game 1 of the 2008 finals, and even the heartbreaking sale of the Seattle Sonics. It’s an underdog story — sorry, under-goat story — for a new generation that is ready for a new, more inclusive kind of game.
GOAT releases theatrically on February 13th, 2026.

Release Date

February 13, 2026

Runtime

93 minutes

Director

Tyree Dillihay

Writers

Aaron Buchsbaum, Teddy Riley, Nicolas Curcio

Producers

Rodney Rothman, Stephen Curry, Michelle Raimo Kouyate, Erick Peyton, Adam Rosenberg