Review: Gus (DMC #58)
It’s almost Super Bowl weekend, and wouldn’t you know it, our next Disnerd Movie Challenge film is a football film! Last night we watched Gus, the 58th film in our challenge. If you’ve never seen this movie about a 100-yard-kicking mule before, read our synopsis below. Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to our review.
Synopsis
Andy is living in Yugoslavia where his brother is a star soccer player, which makes Andy look like a disappointment to his parents by comparison. When Andy tells his mule, Gus, that he wishes he never had to see a soccer ball again, Gus surprises Andy by kicking a soccer ball 100 yards away. Gus becomes a sensation, making the front page of a Yugoslavian newspaper which Debbie Kovac’s parents send her in the mail. Debbie, living in the U.S., shows the newspaper article about the mule to her boss, Hank Cooper, who is in a sour mood because his football team, the Atoms, is a complete failure. The team, led by Coach Venner, is a disgrace, and there’s no hope of an entertaining halftime show to draw crowds to the games because the cheerleaders, the Atomettes, fail at nearly every stunt they try and the band can’t even play (they only pretend to while a record player plays the real music). Cooper finally decides to bring in this mule from Yugoslavia to be the halftime show. Since Debbie’s parents are Yugoslavian, Cooper assigns Debbie to take care of Andy and Gus. After Gus and Andy demonstrate that Gus really can kick a football and score a field goal at 100 yards, Cooper officially makes Gus the halftime show. However, at the first game, Andy gets stage fright in front of so many people. Gus forces Andy back out onto the field and they successfully score several field goals as part of the halftime show. However, this small win isn’t enough, because Cooper and the team are still in financial trouble because of the team’s successive losses. He owes money to Charles (Charlie) Gwynn and Charlie tries to convince him to give up the team. Cooper instead makes a bet with Charlie: if the Atoms win half their games this season, he gets to keep the team. Charlie raises the stakes of the bet: if the Atoms win all their games, make it to the Super Bowl, and win the Super Bowl, then Cooper can keep the team.
Meanwhile, Debbie brings Andy a letter from home, but the letter is all about Andy’s brother and says nothing about him or his halftime show with Gus. Debbie initially declines Andy’s invitation to dinner because she already made plans with Rob (one of the Atoms players), but Gus overhears and pretends to be sick. Debbie cancels her dinner plans to fetch a vet, but when the vet rules that Gus is perfectly healthy, Andy invites her to dinner since she already cancelled her date. Rob, however, missed Debbie’s initial call and was waiting for her at the restaurant. When he tries to reach Debbie, he learns that she went out with Andy and shows up at the drive-in theater to confront Andy, only he’s unable to find Andy or Debbie and finds himself in a sticky situation with a much larger man instead. At the next game, the Atoms are losing badly against the Packers when Cooper decides to put Andy and Gus in the game. Though the referees initially contest the decision, when the official rule book is consulted they realize the rules don’t define “player,” so a player could technically be a man, woman, or even a mule. Play is allowed to continue, and Gus scores! The Atoms end up winning the game thanks to Gus. Charlie confronts Cooper, claiming he cheated by putting the mule in the game and messing with their bet.
As the Atoms go undefeated and become number one in the league, trouble starts brewing. Rob, increasingly jealous of Andy and his relationship with Debbie, finally tackles Andy on the sidelines mid-game. Andy is carried by stretcher onto the field so he can hold the football for Gus to kick it, and the Atoms still win. Later, Charlie hires two newly-released criminals to help him take Gus out of the game. One of the men calls the stable where Gus is kept pretending to be a journalist and finds out all the details of the mule’s schedule. One of the goons then poses as a trailer driver to pick up Gus and Andy for the next game. He purposefully gets lost, causing Andy and Gus to miss the game. Cooper threatens Charlie, knowing it was his fault Gus and Andy missed the game. As the Atoms continue to win, Andy and Gus are invited to appear on television as they’re named Goodwill Ambassadors, and the TV studio surprises Andy with a televised video call to his parents back in Yugoslavia. Though Andy is pleased to see his parents, his father ridicules him, saying he’s not a hero for holding a football with a single finger for a mule to kick it. Later, Charlie’s goons shos up at the stables and trick the security team into thinking Gus has escaped. The goons then slip into the stable and taint Gus’s food with alcohol. The next big game has been declared “Gus Day,” but Gus arrives drunk and wreaks havoc before the game even starts. Cooper again calls out Charlie for interfering. The next day at practice, a jealous Rob again tries to tackle Andy, but Gus kicks Rob across the field. Cooper finally trades Rob to another team—he can’t have anyone risking the safety of Andy or Gus. Before the next game, one of Charlie’s goons calls Andy pretending to be a doctor and summons Andy to the hospital by saying that Debbie was in a car accident. However, when Andy gets to the hospital, the goons detain him, until Andy realizes he’s been tricked and tries to escape. Meanwhile, the Atoms are losing the game, though not by a lot. If Gus would just kick a field goal they could win, but Gus refuses to kick for anyone but Andy. Debbie dons a football uniform and runs onto the field to hold the ball for Gus, begging Gus to kick “for Andy.” Gus kicks the ball and scores a field goal, winning the game for the Atoms just as Andy makes it to the field.
Andy, believing his father was right that he’s no hero, decides to go back home to Yugoslavia without Gus. Gus becomes despondent, and Debbie heads to the airport to stop Andy. Debbie tells him off, which convinces Andy to stay. After apologizing to Cooper, Cooper puts Andy and Gus into hiding, not wanting any further interference before the Super Bowl game. Cooper insinuates to Charlie that Andy and Gus have left the country, but Charlie’s goons have tapped Andy’s phone and overhear him tell Debbie that he can see the ocean, tipping them off that Andy and Gus are staying at Cooper’s Malibu cabin. One of the goons blocks the road from the cabin with a large bus, and while Andy and his driver help get the bus unstuck, the other goon swaps Gus with another mule painted to look just like him. While the goons and the real Gus watch the Super Bowl game from their hotel room, Andy quickly realizes that the mule he has is not Gus. The real Gus escapes from the hotel while Andy and Cooper take a helicopter to search for the missing mule. After Gus leads the goons on a wild goose chase through a grocery store, Andy and Cooper finally spot him and air-lift him back to the stadium in time to rejoin the game. Gus kicks several field goals, but with ten seconds left in the game and the Atoms one point behind, the other team—Rob’s new team—has possession of the ball. When the other team fumbles, sending possession back to the Atoms with three seconds left in the game, Gus slips in the mud during his kick, and headbumps the ball to Andy. Though Rob tries desperately to stop him, Andy ultimately manages to run the ball to the end-zone, winning the game for the Atoms. Andy’s father, watching the game from the stands, finally declares Andy a true hero. As the team celebrates the win, Debbie chides Gus, insinuating that he slipped on purpose so that Andy could have his moment in the spotlight.
Thoughts Before Watching
Megan: Well, it has Don Knotts in it, so that holds some promise. I’m not really big on football, or Disney’s track record with sports-related films up until this point. However, I am pretty pleased with the timing of this film coinciding with Super Bowl weekend, and is that a girl wearing a football helmet and pads in the Disney Plus preview image?! Please tell me that’s part of this film!
Kevin: Cinderella has messed up the name “Gus” for me. All I can ever picture is the mouse Gus Gus. But, hey, this isn’t about a mouse. Like Megan, I’m slightly optimistic that this will be good since it has Don Knotts. I’m also interested that it has Ed Asner; I’m only familiar with his work from around 2000 and onward so I’m curious how he does in an earlier role.
Thoughts After Watching
Kind of a letdown
Megan: I’m not gonna say my hopes were all too high going into this film, but even so, I had expected more from a film that clearly highlighted Don Knotts and a woman in full football gear in the promo image. As much as I enjoyed watching Knotts in the previous film, The Apple Dumpling Gang, and in The Andy Griffith Show, he was a bit of a disappointment in this film. It’s not really his fault—his role was clearly only ever meant to be a minor supporting role, and while the character of Coach Venner is a bumbling, inept character like others that Knotts is well-known for, Gus doesn’t seem to give Knotts nearly enough opportunities to showcase his particular brand of situational humor. His lines often fall flat, and rather than laughing I was left wondering why this idiot coach still had a job when the entire team was the laughingstock of the league.
Kevin: Yeah, this was rather disappointing, especially having just watched The Apple Dumpling Gang. There are some cute moments during the film, and almost all of them surrounding Gus himself. I mean, anything involving animals tends to win some small points with us, provided they are used in a positive light. I will say I’m glad that there doesn’t really appear to be a moment of animal mismanagement going on here (although Crankcase and Spinner’s attempts to nab Gus, however much they fail at it, might qualify). On the whole, the filmmakers appear to have treated the mule playing Gus with care. That said, there isn’t much else going on here. The film lacks structure, the humor is rather limited, and the otherwise great cast list is totally wasted here. It produces a few good chuckles, but overall it was quite mediocre.
A woman on the field, but no one seems to notice
Megan: I had semi-raised hopes thinking that the woman in full football gear in the promo image would play a barrier-breaking role, but I should have known this film from the ‘70s wouldn’t have been able to break that cultural barrier just yet. True, we do have the film telling us that the rules of football don’t define a player, which means a player could be a man, woman, …or mule. And we do get to see Debbie don a football uniform and run out onto the field to save the game, if only by holding the ball so that Gus can kick it. However, the reaction to Debbie’s game-saving move goes unrecognized and uncelebrated. The coaches don’t thank or congratulate her, nor do the other players on the team. In fact, when she happily runs to greet Andy after she just saved the game, she’s clearly expecting to share the celebration with Andy, yet Andy makes it all about him. All he sees is that his father is right—he’s no hero for holding the football for a mule when anyone can replace him. The unspoken subtext I read here: it’s even more embarrassing to him that a woman was able to replace him. Andy can’t even be excited for Debbie, or relieved that his delay didn’t cost the team the game. Nope. Instead he wallows in self-pity. It seems the only one who shows the tiniest hint of shared celebration with Debbie is Gus, but it’s hard to tell since, you know, he’s a mule.
Debbie similarly has no female counterpart to share her success with because she never interacts with another woman throughout the entire film. Though there are other named female characters among the Atomettes, they never speak amongst themselves, so this film joins the many others that have failed the Bechdel test. This film also unfortunately joins the host of other films that turn the female love-interest character into an object of male desire, with both Andy and Rob fighting for Debbie’s affection. (Well, it’s mostly Rob doing the fighting, since Andy seems largely oblivious to it all.)
Megan: Also problematic? The Atomettes cheerleaders. Well, not them exactly, but the way they are presented in context of this film. For one thing, there’s the sexist way the men evaluate the women on their appearance and age. Most of them don’t look all that old, yet the men comment on how the women are too old to still be Atomettes. Similarly, the Atomettes are made to be the butt of several jokes. They’re not women to look up to, respect, or admire. Instead the film makes it clear that we are supposed to mock them, which is an incredibly unfortunate thing when you realize that the only group so thoroughly placed into a role of mockery is a group of female characters in a film dominated by male characters. Even the all-male football team, which is equally unskilled, is not made to be the butt of so many jokes. In fact, they’re largely ignored. The film may not have been as blatantly sexist as some previous films we’ve seen, but it still isn’t winning too many brownie points in my book.
Not every film needs romance
Kevin: One of the least interesting things about Gus is the romance between Debbie and Andy. It was completely unnecessary and does nothing to further the story or the characters. Honestly, there really isn’t anything to suggest these two should love one another. Unfortunately, this is the ‘70s and this is the expectation when you have a young, attractive woman and a young, attractive man acting in a film together. I was able to buy that Debbie was supportive of Andy simply because she’s a good person, but not that she fell for him. Same thing with Andy falling for Debbie. The movie doesn’t give us enough time nor many reasons to support this couple, since the story is focused, after all, on Gus and his game-winning kicks. The romance is based on a very tired trope: girl starts off dating the big, hulking, athletic brute only to fall for the shy, nervous, non-athletic boy. Andy is basically this movie’s underdog. It’s fine to have the underdog win, but I just can’t feel anything for this romance because it comes out of nowhere and is given no weight. It also doesn’t help that neither character has much development. Megan pointed out above how Debbie gets shafted even after playing a huge role in helping the Atoms win, and overall she’s not really seen as having any value by the male characters. With Andy, well, he’s as boring of a protagonist as they come (is he even our protagonist?) Remember how Andy’s fear was that anyone could replace him? The simple irony is that you probably could have put anyone in the role of this character, even Disney veterans like Kurt Russell or Tommy Kirk, and it would have done nothing to impact Andy’s part in this story or his relationship with Debbie because the romance is so meaningless. (If anything, Russell or Kirk would have been better just because they could act well. Gary Grimes’s portrayal of Andy was just so dull all throughout this movie. There’s an example of how badly forced the romance is when Andy and Debbie talk on the phone:
DEBBIE: Andy, are you all right?
ANDY: No. It is my heart.
DEBBIE: Your heart?!
ANDY: Yes, it is very lonely.
DEBBIE: Mine, too.
It’s sooooo cheesy and cringeworthy. Who talks like this?! Who at Disney approved this dialogue? The context here is that Andy and Gus are in hiding so Gus remains safe until the Super Bowl, and Cooper tells Debbie she can’t see Andy. But again, by this point we have no reason to care that Andy and Debbie like one another, so their “love from afar” problem falls flat. Romance has not been Disney’s strongest point so far. Sometimes it’s because it’s based on many outdated and often sexist tropes, and other times it’s because it’s forced into the story. I suspect the latter reason is because whoever is doing the writing at the time thinks this is how you get your audience engaged. You don’t have to force romance into your story just to make it interesting.
Too many protagonists, not enough story
Megan: The film overall is mildly entertaining, and has some okay humor, but it could have been so much better if the story and characters had been better developed. Similar to The Strongest Man in the World, this film suffers from having too many protagonists. We’re not really sure whose story this is. Since the film opens and ends with Andy, my first guess is it’s supposed to be Andy’s story. His is also the only story with a clear emotional arc—Andy must face his own inner measure of self-worth in order to win his father’s approval (though I can’t say the film is entirely successful in the execution of that arc, we can at least see that it’s there). The thing is, Hank Cooper could also be the protagonist. For one thing, he (or rather Edward Asner, perhaps better known nowadays as the voice of Carl Fredrickson in Up) gets top billing in the list of credits for the movie. Also, most of the film is about whether or not Cooper will be able to keep the team, with his clear antagonist, Charles Gwynn, trying to thwart him at every turn. While Andy has multiple antagonists between his father and Rob, his conflict with them is far less interesting and does little to drive the plot forward. As much as Andy wants to prove himself to his father, he never actively does anything to pursue that goal. He doesn’t choose to turn Gus into a football phenom—Cooper does (well, technically, Debbie is the one who plants the idea in his head, but Cooper is the one who acts on it). The problem with Cooper’s arc, though, is he doesn’t have an internal, emotional arc—only an external one. We know he wants to be able to keep the team (and ideally have them be a winning team), and he succeeds, but we don’t get the sense that any of his character flaws have been healed over the course of his journey. Honestly, if the team loses the mule, we can expect they’ll be just as terrible as they were at the beginning, and Cooper will be right back where he started. Meanwhile, if Andy were to lose Gus after the events of this film, we get the sense that his internal change would stick. Perhaps his father would again be disappointed in him, but we get the sense that Andy wouldn’t be disappointed in himself. Andy’s lack of agency throughout the film, however, makes this ultimate change feel unearned.
Kevin: I agree completely on all of the above. I almost think if the movie had just skipped trying to establish character arcs and tried to be a funny sports comedy, it may have done better. In fact, speaking of funny sports comedies, I suspect there are movies that do this genre better justice, such as Angels in the Outfield and Air Bud.
Megan: It seems to me that the film was so focused on trying to be funny that it completely forgot about story and, in the process, lost a good part of the humor. Exhibit A: the grocery store scene. The whole scene really goes on far too long. I get it—having a mule running around a grocery store and making a mess of things while outsmarting the villain’s goons does sound like it could be comedy gold, but honestly I didn’t find it all that funny because it went on too long. Once the initial gag of the mule in a grocery store landed, everything else felt like it was telling the same joke over and over again rather than building on top of it. Even worse—the whole scene did nothing to further the story’s plot. We could have quickly had Gus lose the goons in the grocery store and get out and cut straight to the helicopter, but instead we get this prolonged scene of grocery store antics that honestly doesn’t pay off. I think if this film were ever to be remade it would require a serious rewrite to look at these flaws in character development and plot structure, and it would need a serious upgrade in the humor department.