Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
Posted by: Roberto Azula / Category: Real Life, But Edited
Ah, the 1970s! I was an infant to elementary school student for the entire decade, but even at that age I realized things seemed really laid back and in earth-tone colors. And even a rugrat like me knew that Pele was the God of Soccer, an Olympian with my other gods, Kneviel the God of Motorcycles and Lee Majors the God of Cybernetic Enhancements. Anyway, what I wasn’t entirely aware of was that for a brief time, America had a professional soccer league, with a team that featured that greatest footballers of the time.
Once in a Lifetime tells the breezy, crazy, stranger than fiction tale of the New York Cosmos and America’s brief but passionate embrace of soccer. This is one of the slickest and most fun documentaries I’ve ever enjoyed; Once in a Lifetime is a rare documentary that works as a party/large crowd movie. The music is unrelentingly fabulous; when Steely Dan’s “Showbiz Kids” gets cued up, I was already in a “oooh yeah, giggety giggety giggety” frame of mind. But the music switches over to opera and even “Flight of the Valkreyies” when depicting European and Brazilian soccer, to hilarious results.
Suffice to say that Once in a Lifetime has a cinematic cast of characters, including the biggest real-life jerk who’s the Ultimate Asshole simply because he can; Georgia Chinagalia apparently played ball as well as Pele, and he had the temerity to criticize Pele’s playing style. Through it all are the bewildered, utterly outmatched American players, city-league amateurs who were suddenly playing with the world’s best. It must have been a hoot.
My only criticism of this film is that the film wholly focuses on the Cosmos; you never get the perspective of the twenty-odd other teams in the North American Soccer League who had to face Pele & Company; what’s more surprising is that the Cosmos did not win every game and got knocked out of the playoffs…so apparently either the other teams were recruiting Brazilians and Europeans wholesale, or some Americans learned how to play ball. Other than this significant absence, Once in a Lifetime is a rollicking, very funny, and extremely naive flick. Let’s face it, kids. Soccer, er I mean “football”, will never make it in the US as long as our culture revolves around commercial television…
… so then again, maybe soccer might have a chance….
Tags: new york cosmos, once in a lifetime, pele, soccer movies
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:26 am
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