Une soirée avec Les Boys

In the 19th century, there was a commonly held belief amongst the ruling class that participation in sports prepared adolescent boys for the rigours of life. Success on the pitch or on the track indicated the potential for success in the world, at large. The belief that elements of sport, such as teamwork, discipline and a sense of fair play, are transferrable to non-sporting activities has persisted, rightly or wrongly, to this very day.

Considering the status professional sports holds in popular culture, I guess it's only natural that Hollywood would try to exploit this by bringing sport dramas to the silver screen. But let's be honest here, the majority of movies about sports are crap. At one point, the "Powers That Be" at ESPN posted a list of the Top 20 Sports Movies of All Time and, to my surprise, Slapshot cracked the Top 5. Slapshot is widely viewed as the best hockey movie of all time, but considering the main competition consists of movies like Youngblood and the Mighty Ducks trilogy, it's pretty easy to see why.

I'm not a hockey fanatic, by any means, but being Canadian it's part of my cultural upbringing, which is why I decided to take a look at the Québécois contribution to hockey films: Les Boys. This is the story of a garage league hockey team, sponsored by a local pub. The pub owner gets himself in trouble playing poker with a local loan shark and ends up in a wager for ownership of his bar, something he neglects to tell his team until the first intermission between periods--after they've been beaten and bloodied by a goon squad from the local crime syndicate. In true Hollywood-esque form, Les Boys rise to the occasion and save their local watering hole. Yes, it's formulaic. But even so, there's something fun about the film and even its sequels (There are 4 films in the series, to date).

I liked the interaction between the characters. And even though they're mainly archetypes, there's still some heart and reality to them. These are weekend warriors, each with their own problems and "real life" concerns outside of the rink. Hockey is their escape from that. On the ice, they try to emulate their heroes and believe me, it's no coincidence (though perhaps a subtlety lost on english audiences) that the players wear the jersey numbers of iconic Québécois hockey players, like Maurice Richard, Mario Lemieux and Guy Lafleur. Hockey is an obsession in Quebec, moreso than in the rest of Canada, as hard as that may be to believe, and Les Boys provides an interesting glimpse into that aspect of Québécois culture. But more than that, I believe it accurately portrays the camaraderie and male bonds one finds in beer leagues, regardless of city, province, state or language.

Though it will never dethrone Slapshot as the cream of the hockey-film crop, its "everyman" aspect makes it worth seeing.