Goat’s marketing has heavily emphasized its hailing from Sony Pictures Animation, the label responsible for Kpop Demon Hunters and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Unfortunately, Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley’s screenplay instead evokes a typical Illumination feature. Specifically, Goat suffers from the “first draft” issue tripping up so many Illumination titles. The Secret Life of Pets and Sing, specifically, feel like bare-bones takes on starting concepts (“Toy Story but with pets” and “animals do karaoke”).

Normally, you’d flesh out these abstractions with specificities in subsequent drafts. Instead, the house that the Minions built unleashes motion pictures frustratingly stripped to the bone. Goat has a similar ambiance. What’s on screen feels strictly like the pitch for an animal-centric underdog sports movie. Lively visual and voice-over flourishes can only provide so many jolts of life. Though far from bad, Goat’s “first draft” vibes are all over the court.

 Goat Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin) has spent his whole life with dreams of becoming a roarball (read: basketball) player for his hometown team, the Vineland Thorns. That’s pretty much impossible, though, since Harris is a “small.” Only large animals compete in roarball tournaments. However, after going viral for his unexpectedly spry playing, this small-town dreamer gets his chance.

Turn out the Vineland Thorns desperately need a sixth player. Much to the chagrin of long-standing, team-dominating panther player Jett Fillmore (Gabrielle Union), Harris is recruited for the Thorns. Now this “small” must prove his mettle on a squad that’s plagued with confidence-deprived oddballs. Whether it’s rhino father Archie, put-upon coach Dennis Cooper (Patton Oswalt), or Komodo dragon weirdo Modo (Nick Kroll), among others, there’s no shortage of colorful personalities surrounding Harris. How on Earth could any of these players hope to beat out rival champions like Mane Attraction (Aaron Pierre)? Maybe big hopes lie with that smallest team member.

Goat’s marketing involving KPop Demon Hunters and the Spider-Verse movies unfortunately draws attention to one of its biggest screenwriting problems. Those earlier Sony Pictures Animation features were sublime in making protagonists Rumi and Miles Morales, respectively, consistently compelling even when they shared the screen with blue tigers or Peter Parkedcar. In contrast, Will Harris is an oddly stagnant, unengaging figure to anchor a movie. Part of the problem is that his greatest dream (securing a place on a roarball team) is achieved within 20 minutes of Goat’s runtime.

Before the first act is done, this “small” goes from struggling to pay rent and making DoorDash orders to flying on private jets. That’s a rapid-fire, drastic character shift that doesn’t leave this critter anywhere significant to go from there. Buchsbaum and Riley’s script fails to deliver specific personality traits or defects for Harris to grapple with for the rest of the story. He’s mostly a spectator to Fillmore’s arc, which concerns her exhibiting selfish behavior to prove she’s not “washed-up” or “old.” This panther sports legend gets enough characterization to frustratingly reinforce Harris’s stagnant nature.

A sports movie without an engrossing underdog protagonist will inevitably struggle like a Gene Kelly musical lacking fancy footwork. Thankfully, Goat does have some “plays” that pay off. Happily, this production continues Sony Animation’s love for ultra-stylized, 2D-influenced animation that Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. the Machines pioneered. Characters are always contorting their bodies or eyes into entertainingly zany shapes. Little squiggles or exclamation lines punctuate outsized body language.

Most impressive are the various backdrops. Vineland, Harris’s city home, is realized with warm tableaus mimicking hand-painted backgrounds. You can practically see watercolor blots littering these foliage-covered surroundings. Not only do these look outstanding on the big screen, but they also accentuate a cozy, inviting aura to a location near and dear to Harris’s heart. Meanwhile, the final roarball game takes place in an outlandish domicile littered with lava-saturated pillars. The space’s over-the-top ambiance effectively reflects this showdown’s momentousness for the central characters.

Pixar’s Elemental and Inside Out 2 have seen that studio still embracing its default “stylized characters/ultra-realistic backdrops” animation style. In contrast, it’s fun to witness Goat’s animation team leaning into ridiculousness that could only exist in this medium. Having said that, it is frustrating how often Goat grounds its story in concrete reality. Key scenes just take place in rudimentary offices or private jets. More dreamlike, impressionistic digressions like Gwen Stacy’s Across the Spider-Verse “coming out” scene or the most heightened KPop Demon Hunters musical numbers would’ve been welcome.

Director Tyree Dillihay and the screenwriters also don’t execute much madcap imagination for Goat’s comedy. There’s an unfortunate reliance on fart gags and tired punchlines (a gag about Harris “offending the roach community” is groan-inducing). At its worst, Goat’s jokes feel exhaustingly noisy. At least comic sidekick Modo is a hoot, thanks to Kroll doing the role as a Jermaine Clement impression. Chaotic unpredictability underpins this wild card Vineland Thorns player, which more Goat punchlines needed.

Resorting to familiar wells for animated family movie comedy reflects Goat’s frustrating perfunctory tendencies. This extends to the emotional beats, which materialize both hurriedly and with minimal distinctiveness. These are the Goat qualities most exemplifying its “first draft” nature. The conventional heartstring-tugging attempts feel like vague outlines of pathos. Specifically, moments relying on audience fondness for Vineland needed another pass. Investment in this community is difficult when it seemingly only consists of a basketball court and a diner.

Unlike so many first draft Illumination features, Goat actually delivers on visual razzle-dazzle. The various basketball games sparkle on-screen while the grand finale especially radiates with sweeping showmanship. Delivering on the courtside excitement could make this endeavor work for younger viewers. Even these moviegoers, though, might leave the theater with the itching feeling that this title had more potential. Additional details and depth could’ve made Goat a first-draft pick on par with the Sony Animation films highlighted on its poster.

Goat is now playing in theaters everywhere.