Basketball Movie Review
GOAT
Steph Curry helps produce an animated underdog story that turns basketball into full-contact animal 'roarball' without losing the familiar obsession with proving a smaller player belongs.
A strong modern kids-shelf addition: familiar sports DNA, impressive animation and enough basketball thinking underneath the fantasy to justify the crossover.
Movie details
2026 · 1h 40m · Comedy · Family
Director Tyree Dillihay
- Caleb McLaughlin — Will Harris
- Gabrielle Union — Jett Fillmore
- Stephen Curry — Lenny Williamson
- Aaron Pierre — Mane Attraction
- Tyree Dillihay directed the 2026 Sony Pictures Animation film, with Stephen Curry serving as a producer through Unanimous Media and appearing in the voice cast.
- The film's fictional sport is called roarball, a co-ed full-contact game whose underdog story deliberately draws on basketball ideas about size, skill and opportunity.
01
The Take
GOAT is not literally basketball, but the sport's fingerprints are everywhere. A small player enters a professional game built for bigger bodies, gets judged by measurements and has to turn skill, timing and belief into a competitive advantage. The animal-world premise lets the movie exaggerate every size mismatch basketball already understands.
02
Does the Basketball Hold Up?
Stephen Curry's producer credit makes sense because the core fantasy is the argument his career repeatedly won: physical archetypes do not own skill. Roarball changes the rules, but spacing, shooting confidence, reads, role acceptance and a smaller player's battle against assumptions remain recognisable basketball ideas.
03
Best Basketball Moment
The protagonist learning to stop imitating the bodies around him and use his own advantages, the cleanest bridge between the animated sport and the basketball logic underneath it.
04
Ball Cred
Stephen Curry produces and appears in the voice cast, while Sony Pictures Animation builds the fictional sport around recognisable basketball underdog and team-role ideas.