Movie review: 'GOAT' (2026)

GOAT (trailer) is a computer-animated sports-comedy film from Sony Pictures Animation, released in February 2026. Directed by Tyree Dillihay and Adam Rosette, it's 100 minutes long. I don't even like sports, and I really enjoyed it! Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it 83% / 93%. I'd definitely recommend going to see it before Disney's Hoppers steals the limelight.

Taking place in a world of anthro animals (yay!), the manager of the struggling Vineland Thorns basketball roarball team recruits a new player named Will, a goat played by Caleb McLaughlin. Will has dreamed his whole life of becoming a pro, and is up against a ton of discrimination for being physically small on the court. But mostly it's the other members of the team who are their own worst enemies - and Will's arrival is the catalyst that starts turning things around.

Comparisons to Zootopia 2 will be inevitable, despite them being very different films. GOAT's teaser trailer and Zootopia 2's main trailer both dropped on the same day in 2025, despite Zootopia 2 aiming for a late November release, and GOAT being timed to coincide with the NBA All-Star Game the following February.

To be honest, the initial teaser for GOAT didn't make a great impression on me, but now I think I understand why. It feels like Sony's marketing department were being chickenshit. More on that soon. How about this: Did you see The Bad Guys 2 and wish there was more of Kitty? Well, go see GOAT and you'll get a whole lot of Jett, a black panther! (And also because it's a good film.)

The story of GOAT is a bit cliché - not a bad thing when it's done well - and they do it well. The new guy on the team has to earn people's respect, the team has to pull itself together and score a big win, you know the drill. Bonus: you don't need to know anything about basketball!

Of course there's some corporate tie-in stuff; it's fairly benign. The timing with the NBA event mentioned above. The Under Armour logo can be seen throughout the film, who partnered with basketball player Stephen Curry, one of the film's producers and voice actors, to promote their new "Curry 13" shoe.

Will the goat is the film's starting protagonist, but he's not the film's real protagonist. That role goes to the current champ of the team, Jett. She's the flawed character, she's got the big inner obstacles to overcome, and she's the one with the real story arc. Will's arc is situational and not as interesting, though we, as viewers, are still invested in his success and root for him as the underdog. And he's kind of plain.

But in marketing the film, Sony didn't want to promote a female character playing what (in our world) is predominantly seen as a guy's sport, so her role in the trailer is seriously downplayed. Instead of focusing on a Will vs Jett conflict in the teaser, they made it about Will and the small-vs-tall thing. And because they left out the true core of the film, the trailer had to resort to other, more stupid clips. Like the toilet humor, which thankfully the film doesn't have much of, but made me doubt if I should go see it.

It's frustrating, because while Sony Pictures Animation has done some terrific work and have been absolutely hitting it out of the ballpark with films like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters, I'm calling their marketers chickenshit because when they have well-written characters like Jett, and good films like Wish Dragon, they're totally willing to throw them under the bus and not give them the promotion they deserve.

Okay, let's switch to the positive! Right off the bat, GOAT does what the first Zootopia film didn't do: It includes reptiles and birds in its animal universe. Zootopia's character designs are softer and smoother; GOAT's characters are mildly more cartoony, with sharper and chunkier designs.

Zootopia was very active in showing its world-building, while GOAT's approach is more passive. It didn't occur to me (until I started writing this review) that the issue of food in the talking-animal world of GOAT doesn't really come up. I remember apple pie, someone throwing a sandwich, and... the film held my attention so much, that it didn't even occur to me to think about it.

And yeah, so many different animals! Will's boss is a llama, his landlord's a gerbil, and his best friends are a capybara and an aardwolf. His fellow teammates are a rhino (raising two very intense twins), an ostrich, a giraffe, Jett the black panther, and Modo, a wonderfully weird dude who's Komodo dragon-ish plus other reptile traits. The world of the film has a wide variety of sizes, from the tiny to the huge, and we get to see even more of the big ones on the other roarball teams, though the film doesn't dwell on them. Except for Mane Attraction, a rival Andalusian horse with attitude.

Another neat feature is that the roarball arenas have extremely different biomes, crazily so. Will's hometown court is jungle-themed, and we also get to see ice- and lava-themed ones. Impractical? Possibly lethal? Sure! Fun to watch? Ohh yeah! And the teams are mixed-gender! Take that, NBA!

One thing that surprised me is that occasionally the bipedial characters will switch to being quadrupedal, especially if they're in a hurry to get somewhere. And there's the occasional animal stereotype that I wish had simply been left out, like Will eating a tin can, or the ostrich player burying her head in the ground.

The running gag that I enjoyed the most was Jett (Gabrielle Union) showing her feline side at random points, in stark contrast to her tall, buff, angry personality. Learning her situation, and seeing her struggle to change, that really sold the film for me.

The other members of the team also have their moments, especially when their down-trodden and largely ignored coach (Patton Oswalt) finally gets to coach, and goes into over-drive. And Modo - he's an experience. You'll love Modo.

There was only one tiny plot thread that felt unfinished. Very early in the film, Will demonstrates extremely acute observational skills. I felt sure this talent was being set up for something later on, but it never came up again. Sure, he's got great aim at shooting the ball, but that doesn't quite feel like the same thing.

Otherwise the film really holds itself together. Social media is a background theme in the story - how it's used positively and negatively, and what effect it can have on people. And I really liked the visuals, the animation, the music - well, I'm not really into rap, but those bits don't last very long. On the other hand, when they suddenly used a cover of a song by Crowded House - that hit me hard, in a good way.

Even though GOAT didn't have an incredibly deep story, it really pressed my furry buttons in all the right ways. The biggest surprise was hearing a certain (cough) anatomical term used in a PG movie. I watched it in 3D - I don't think it really added anything, but I was very happy to have seen it on a big screen. I'd had a rough week, and I left the theater feeling positive and elated, and that's despite sports and rap music. Honestly, I think I liked it just a little bit more than Zootopia 2. Definitely recommended!

(Mini-update: Found a bonus short where the team members get interviewed.)