Guys & Balls

Review By: Brian Otano
BrianOtano@TheCinemaSource.com

Set in rural, blue collar Germany, Guys & Balls tells the story of a gay soccer goalie who forms a gay soccer team after being exposed by his teammates and ousted from his local soccer team.

Ecki (Maximilian Brückner) and Udo (Carlo Ljubek) play on a soccer team that’s trying to get promoted to an upper league. Ecki blows a play at the end of a crucial game and is caught in a compromising position with one of his friends in the backroom of the bar where the team has gone to lick their wounds. Before long, he is cut from the team and a fierce rivalry emerges between the two star players.

The shame of his parents and the laughing stock of his town, Ecki runs away to Dortmund, where his sister Susanna works as a nurse. She helps him assemble a motley crew of queer soccer players. The team takes over a soccer field owned by an old Keith Richards look-alike and his grizzled chain-smoking wife and quickly get to work preparing for the big showdown against Ecki’s old team. After a few minor setbacks (losing a player to a sling accident… always a bitch), the team prove themselves worthy of the field owner’s coaching. With his help, they return to Ecki’s hometown and defeat his local team.

Despite the laughs Guys & Balls serves up, it treads the far-too-familiar territory of the sports-underdog-comeback movie to the letter. What saves the movie are the genuinely touching moments shared between Ecki and his love interest, Sven, who up until this point was assumed straight by his co-workers, including Ecki’s sister.

The team Ecki manages to assemble is a parade of clichés, with an occasional interesting touch that an American director might not have been brave enough to include. Note the polyamorous leather trio who all try to cram into a small full size bed. Another of the teammates is actually straight but manages to scheme his way onto the team so that he can ask Susanna out on a date—a merciful turn of events for a girl who is driven to tears of frustration when she realizes all the good ones are actually GAY GAY GAY.

Damn right.

Movie Grade: B-