Bonus ScorchStack: I watched Wayne Gretzky's son's romcom so you don't have to
It was not very good
Welcome to the bonus ScorchStack, an extra bit of content for you that we will run in case of super important events. The super important event this week is, uh, this movie.
Hello everyone. Did you see this Tweet:
And think to yourself, “Wow this looks terrible. I don’t really want to watch it but I want to know what happens.” Well look no further, that’s what I’m here for. I decided to watch this movie so you don’t have to. I will give a summary and review. It’ll be in the style of a Danny Gonzalez movie summary/review, meaning as I talk about what happens with the movie I will also give thoughts along the way. I was taking notes throughout the movie so this will be based off those notes.
Oh, a little disclaimer. I’m very stupid and the entire time I thought the main character was Wayne Gretzky’s son but I already wrote this out and called him “Wayne Gretzky’s son” the entire time instead of his name in the movie. I was later Googling Wayne Gretzky’s son and discovered it was in fact not him. So every time I say “Wayne Gretzky’s son” just know I mean the main character, who is not him. My apologies for the confusion. Wayne Gretzky’s son was actually only in this movie for like a total of five minutes.
So the movie starts off with this scene within the first minute:
It was very good, I was very excited. Well I’m an idiot and I shouldn’t have been.
After this scene, it shows a woman doing laundry for over a minute for some reason. Anyways, it’s then Wayne Gretzky’s son (the guy receiving the finger in the screenshot above) when he was younger but his older self is narrating. His coach tells him that nobody here is making the NHL. Kind of messed up to tell that to the kids you’re coaching but anyways. He’s then in class and they all have to write a letter to themselves in 15 years and the teacher says he’ll mail it to each student. Kind of weird. Oh and the teacher says to Wayne Gretzky’s son that he’s going to be the next owner of the New York Rangers, again a weird thing to tell a kid.
Fast forward, it’s years later and he’s at Harvard. The annunciation in this movie is not good I thought a guy told Wayne Gretzky’s son to “get hard” three times before finally turning on the captions and realizing he said skate hard. At Harvard, he played forward for two years but then got a leg injury. He keeps looking at the camera and talking? I truly do not understand what point of view they are attempting here in the movie.
He ended up having a leg surgery and he said his only chance of playing was to play for a minor league team with no internet access so they couldn’t look up his stats from college. Then it shows him playing for a shitty team in Germany so you have to assume this place has zero internet access.
Oh, this isn’t important to the movie but I have to mention it. He gets a penalty in a game and the score keeper is beside him and he says he’s a fan of this guy who used to play with him and now plays for the Penguins and wants an autograph for his son, so Wayne Gretzky’s son says if he shaves 10 seconds off his penalty he’ll get him a signed jersey, so the guy does it?? That is not allowed. *By the way his friend who plays for the Penguins is actually Wayne Gretzky’s son.
This scene then happens:
No particular reason. Just that shot for a good five seconds. Moving on.
He then gets traded to a team in Sweden I guess. He sees a skinny blonde girl at this bus stop and looks to the camera and says “holy shit.” Lol. Apparently he’s in the papers for joining a Swedish team and he’s supposed to save their season? They keep calling him the American in the media I guess even though this is like a shitty minor league team so idk why the media cares. He gets called fuck face at the bus stop by some guys in the car picking him up who you later learn is his coach but he also knows the girl at the bus stop? I guess it’s a small town. Also they kept calling him the American but there’s another American on the team who’s also that guy in Letterkenny.
Anyways, his coach throughout the movie keeps calling him fuck face. I don’t understand. It really sounds like they’re trying very hard to use Canadian hockey slang.
He arrives at his new place with his roommate and he says to his roommate “hey great salad” ???? I don’t know.
Their chirps are very bad and sound like they went on Reddit and searched “hockey slang. hockey locker room chirps” and used the first thing they could find. One was “Go get a penis pump and Viagra for this guy!” Another one later in the movie was the guy from Letterkenny saying to someone on the other team “They sell those muffins by the dozen you fucking plug?” ???????? Literally could not tell you what that means.
Then Wayne Gretzky’s son runs into that girl from the bus stop at the grocery store where she works but he’s trying to act like he has no idea who she is. I genuinely could not tell if he’s trying to joke around and playfully act like he doesn’t remember her as a flirty thing or if he’s actually trying to act like he doesn’t remember her so she doesn’t think he’s weird. That’s what the acting is like in this movie if you were curious. Anyways she said “You’re the idiot from the bus stop?” and he goes “Oh it’s you!” It was very “joke they would make on a Disney show in 2005 with a laugh track”.
Wayne Gretzky’s son and that girl start dating I guess? I literally don’t know they don’t show the evolution of their relationship but they’re all of a sudden together. He takes her to the rink and shows her how to skate for a date but at one point they’re talking and the music is very loud so you literally don’t know what they’re saying lol. It’s not even like a “oh there’s no sound it’s just music you’re not supposed to hear what they’re saying.” Because you can still hear them talking through the entirety of the music but not well enough to know what they’re saying. At one point she clearly wants to fuck but he’s thinking about hockey and you hear the voice in his head say something like “knowing stuff like this keeps me from getting laid”. By the way, for this next scene, I’m going to show exactly what was in my notes as I wrote out bullet points throughout the movie:
“- Omg she wants to fuck but he doesn’t get it.
- omg they’re gonna have sex on the ice
- THEY’RE FUCKING!!
- in a bed”
So yes they fucked, but not at the rink, in a bed. Very inappropriate Wayne Gretzky’s son. *Again, not Wayne Gretzky’s son, so he did not fuck on camera, my apologies.
Oh at one point they’re on the team bus and they got McDonald’s and everybody is sharing a single McFlurry???? Literally just all passing around one McFlurry and each taking a bite from it. Just get more McFlurries please.
Anyways, it’s practice now and Wayne Gretzky’s son was just skating on his own, going extremely slow like 1 mph and just fell VERY lightly but somehow hurt his leg? And it wasn’t even the leg he fell on? I don’t know, they needed some conflict in this movie, which I thought was the point of the fall, but this was very clearly not the conflict I ended up learning because he missed like three games and was fine and literally faced no hardships at all due to it.
Ok so, this next part is extremely confusing. Throughout the movie the girl mentions how it’s her dream to move to New York (where he’s from) and work at a museum because she loves art. So now it’s like 10 minutes left of the movie and she’s moving to New York because she got a job at a museum there and she didn’t tell him even though they’re dating? Wtf. She looks at the camera and says “I don’t know why I didn’t tell him.”
That’s all they told us about that. Zero other information. She just left him a note.
It’s now close to the end of their season and he thinks he got cut from the team but he actually got a call up to Kumla which I guess is a better team for a better league in Sweden. Then there’s another reference to salad? He’s getting his photo taken and said “how’s the salad looking” I don’t know what salad means. Anyways the movie ends with his call up to Kumla and then Swedish rap is playing.
That’s the end of the movie. Literally that’s it. No conclusion, no conflict, no trajectory even. It was weird. Also I don’t even know what they were talking about half the time I truly just don’t know.
Throughout the movie you hear him talking about aspirations, and that girl mentioned how her dad had a passion for woodwork but then she came along so he put his dreams to the side. And at one point he sees a man and woman with a baby and they look happy and he seems sad. Oh and his coach told him he played with San Jose’s farm team but hurt his shoulder after a few weeks, but that wasn’t true it was so he could look after his god daughter, is what Wayne Gretzky’s son later learns. And he keeps asking his friends if they have plans outside of hockey. So you think he’ll end up quitting hockey or something and going back home to New York to have a like a new life or choose a different path and career. Nope. You know when you watch a movie and there’s always at least a lesson? Or some point to the movie? None of that here. Zero point to anything. I don’t understand, this was more confusing than Shutter Island. They were just like “that’s the movie you fucking idiots. Did you think it was going to be interesting or at least have some sort of resolution?? Fuck you. You piece of shit.”
The most exciting thing was Wayne Gretzky’s son having sex ON CAMERA. *Not true, so nothing exciting happened.
OH and at the end he got a letter FROM THAT TEACHER IN SCHOOL and it said something like “Dear me in 15 years. I hope you found something you love as much as I love hockey!” So you THINK he’ll end up going to find that girl because he’s in love or something but nope. Also how did the teacher even know where he lived?
Anyways, that’s it. It was very bad I did NOT enjoy it. I do not recommend watching it. You know when some movies are so bad that they’re good? This was not that. And the movie title “Odd Man Rush” had zero reference to anything in the movie they just wanted to use a hockey term. All in all very terrible. I hope you enjoyed this summary so now you don’t have to watch it yourself. Save yourself the hour and 25 minutes.