Soccer is hugely popular almost everywhere in the world except America. Sometimes I wonder if the rest of the planet has caught on to something that we're missing. Then I see a movie like "Goal! The Dream Begins" and I realize it's better this way. We get enough generically inspiring sports movies with just baseball, basketball and football. Imagine how many more there would be if soccer were added to the mix.

Comprising bits and pieces culled from a thousand other sports movies, "Goal!" is the story of a young man's attempt to live the American dream. Alas, since his American dream is to play professional soccer, he must go to England to do it. Darn that outsourcing!

He is Santiago Munez (Kuno Becker), a Mexican immigrant who works for his father's landscaping business, buses tables at a Chinese restaurant, and in his spare time plays community-league soccer. His on-field wizardry catches the attention of retired pro Glen Foy (Stephen Dillane), who has ties to the Newcastle United team and arranges for Santiago to try out with them.

Can Santiago become a professional footballer? It depends on whether he can:

#1. Raise the money necessary to fly to England.

#2. Convince his unsupportive father to let him go.

#3-100. Overcome the 98 other obstacles the film puts in his way (jealous teammates, snaky sports agents, the perils of fame, a mild asthma condition, and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on).

The four credited writers have compiled their screenplay with a checklist in hand, and you can rest assured that no sports-movie cliché is left unexplored, with a new potential crisis arising on cue every five minutes.

Santiago gets cut from the Newcastle team about a dozen times, but is always saved at the last moment by Fate (or sometimes by Alessandro Nivola, who plays his hotshot teammate). His asthma condition is uncovered by a pointlessly antagonistic fellow player, and his sort-of girlfriend sees a tabloid photo of him cavorting with bimbos at a nightclub, and he has a hard time adjusting to the rain-soaked, muddy fields of England -- but never you fear, he triumphs over every setback with his handsome smile and steely determination intact.

I'm amused by Santiago's father (Tony Plana), who wants his son to forsake his silly dream of being an athlete and focus on the family business. I can't imagine a real father being this callous toward his son's ambitions -- it's not like Santiago is neglecting his chores in order to play soccer, and the Newcastle thing really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- but perhaps such lousy parents do exist.

In one of Santiago's dad's "don't follow your dreams, dreams are stupid" speeches, he very passionately describes how hard he worked back in the old country. "In Mexico, I work construction. At night I clean up in a brothel!" he says.

Am I the only one who would love to see a film about a guy whose second job is cleaning up in a brothel? It would be a comedy, of course, with some schlub of an actor like John C. Reilly or Philip Seymour Hoffman in the lead. Or Jack Black, if you want to go full-on wacky with it.

Also, wouldn't "Son of a Whorehouse Janitor" be a great name for an album? Maybe even for a band, but definitely an album. I'm giddy just thinking about it.

Anyway, "Goal! The Dream Begins" is the first part in a planned trilogy (part two is due later this year), but if they're all going to be this bland and unimaginative, I don't see much point in continuing. It has some cool soccer scenes, if you're a fan (director Danny Cannon apparently is), and evidently some professional players make cameos. It's a very nice movie, completely harmless but completely useless, too.

THE DVD

Audio is available in English, French or Spanish. Subtitles are available in English or Spanish.

VIDEO: The anamorphic widescreen (2.40:1) transfer is pristine, as should be expected from a very recent big-budget film. The colors are warm in L.A., colder in England, the way they're meant to be, and there is no serious edge enhancement or any blemishes or scratches.

AUDIO: Very good Dolby Digital mix. The crunching of the football matches is gritty and powerful, and the dialogue and music are well balanced.

EXTRAS: Director Danny Cannon and writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais provide an audio commentary that is among the dullest things I've ever listened to. Their observations are mundane, dealing mostly with how they found this location, or how good that actor was. Sometimes they're just narrating the film: "Oh, this is where we find out he's an asthmatic," etc. Truly useless.

Then there are a couple of average featurettes:

"The Beautiful Game" (6:47) exists to point out how popular soccer (er, football) is everywhere else in the world. The Newcastle United and Madrid Real teams are discussed specifically.

"Behind the Pitch" (10:57) is a more straightforward making-of doc, focusing on the arduous production, finding the locations, getting Newcastle's cooperation, etc. Reasonably interesting behind-the-scenes info, as far as it goes.

A group called Happy Mondays performs the "Playground Superstar" music video (3:58), which combines a love of soccer with a love of generic music videos.

Finally, "Golden Moments from the FIFA Cup" (3:28) is nothing more than a series of highlight shots from various FIFA Cup games over the years. There is no commentary on them, nor are they even in chronological order. Just random shots of people scoring goals.

IN SUMMARY

This is a good movie to rent if you're a soccer fan, or a fan of harmlessly inspiring sports movies in general. The DVD features are unspectacular, as is the movie itself, but none of it is bad.

(Note: Most of the "movie review" portion of this article comes from the review I wrote when the movie was released theatrically. I have re-watched it in the course of reviewing the DVD, however.)