Goal! The Dream Begins

Sometimes the first movie in a trilogy isn’t that good, but it fails just nobly enough to still make you curious enough to maybe see the sequels. Goal! The Dream Begins — yet another Disney sports flick, this time involving an L.A. Mexican illegal named Santiago (Kuno Becker) who gets a shot across the pond kicking balls for Newcastle United — has two more installments featuring the very likable Becker on tap, and I’d like to see Santiago go on to win the World Cup or something, joined by Alessandro Nivola as Newcastle’s party-boy star. (The cast, all around, is sterling.) There’s only one thing they don’t need to bring back for the sequels, and that’s the movie’s appetite for every sports cliché there ever was.