Feb 9, 2026 9:00am PT 'GOAT' Review: A Go-for-Your-Dream Fairy Tale With a Bold New Animated Look and a Brashly Winning Attitude It's a sports fable set in a vibrant dystopia, with a look and feel that break out of the standard animation doldrums. By Owen Gleiberman Plus Icon Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic @OwenGleiberman Latest 'GOAT' Review: A Go-for-Your-Dream Fairy Tale With a Bold New Animated Look and a Brashly Winning Attitude 55 minutes ago 'Dracula' Review: Caleb Landry Jones Is a Stylishly Fey Dracula - Gary Oldman Redux - in Luc Besson's Otherwise Wan Potboiler 2 days ago 'Melania' Review: Brett Ratner's First Lady Documentary Is a Cheeseball Infomercial of Staggering Inertia 1 week ago See All Courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing For a decade, maybe more, the animated look and aesthetic established by "Toy Story" in 1995 gave the Pixar movies their eye-popping surface wonder. What we quickly came to think of as the Pixar house style totally ruled - as digitally animated artistry, and as commerce. So it was no big surprise to see that it spread. In essence, the Pixar style, that tactile bubble sheen of reality, became the mode of all mainstream Hollywood studio animation. And when then happened, it ceased to be exciting. There were still many good animated features, but the look and feel of them became standard, comparable to how the hand-drawn animated aesthetic of Walt Disney, so glorious in the era of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Pinocchio" and "Fantasia" and "Bambi," came to seem less magical in the age of "Cinderella" and "Peter Pan." Related Stories Joe Rogan Says He Wasn't Nominated for Golden Globes' Best Podcast Award Because He Refused to Pay the $500 Entry Fee: 'I Don't Want to Be a Part of That' Netflix Will Stream 'The Secret Agent' in Brazil, Opens New São Paulo Headquarters All of which makes "GOAT" a vibrant surprise. It's a highly original and rousing animated feature - a sports fable with a hip-hop vibe and an off-kilter cosmology. It doesn't look or move like other animated features. I liked "Zootopia 2" just fine, but in tone and visual imagination it was the definition of standard. "GOAT," however, takes place in a demimonde of its own devising, a city called Vineland that's envisioned with a painterly sensuality that lures the audience in. It's almost a dystopia - a crumbling animal kingdom populated by critters of every stripe, with vines hanging in unruly abundance, often draped over the infrastructure. And that image of life poking up between the cracks of decay extends to the settings: the dingy living rooms, or a basketball court surrounded by a ratty chain-link face, with rusty backboards and metal nets (it's known as the Cage, and treated as the neighborhood Thunderdome). At the same time, the film's backdrops are vibrant in a nearly Impressionist way. Some of them look like they could have been painted by Cézanne. Popular on Variety The lush laidback dystopia of "GOAT" is bracing because it feels so novel, and inviting because it feels like home. And that's part of what makes the movie, directed by Tyree Dillihay (with Adam Rosette as co-director), a go-for-your-dream fairy tale that we haven't seen before. The game played in these settings isn't basketball - it's called roarball, and it's a mangy, brutal, hyper-fast version of basketball, a reckless high-flying team gladiator match with hoops. We meet the film's hero, Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin), when he's a young Boer goat, a junior sports fanatic who gets taken by his single mother to see the Vineland team, the Thorns, at the Green House, the local roarball colosseum. Will and his mom don't have much money, but he manages to get in to watch his idol, Jett Fillmore, a towering panther voiced by Gabrielle Union is the most vivid piece of animation acting I've encountered in quite some time. Her Jett is a champion, full of bluster, always throwing shade, like Caitlin Clark infused with the spirit of RuPaul. But she's got vulnerabilities that round the character right out to three dimensions. Ten years after the prologue, we meet Will as a grown-up goat doing deliveries for the Whisker Diner, but he's on the verge of being evicted from his apartment. He still dreams of being a roarball star (he's an ace shooter who can drop a swish at 50 feet), but he's...a goat. Which means that he's a "small," according to the Vineland caste system. How can a small compete in a world of oversize jock beasts? The members of the Thorns are all gigantic, and when Will goes to shoot hoops by himself at the Cage, he runs into Mane Attraction (Aaron Pierre), a dredlocked Andalusion horse from a rival team who's pure gangsta. Mane challenges Will to a round of one-and-one and basically smashes him. But Will gets off a few good shots, which are captured on a phone camera, and when his buddy creates a viral video, making it look like Will trounced Mane in the duel, it attracts the attention of Flo (voiced by a super-sly Jenifer