GMM-Tai-Hub would like us to forget that its new football comedy, "Lucky Loser" ("Mak Tae Loke Talueng"), was pulled from release in May because Laotian diplomats thought the film about their national football team hiring a Thai coach might be offensive to Lao people.

Now, thanks to the magic of digital editing and dubbing, Laos is no more. Thailand's neighbour to the Northeast is called Arvee.

By a fluke, their national side is the "lucky loser" - the wild-card draw in the World Cup regionals. The country is also home to the Miss Universe winner. It's even been given a stretch of coast on the South China Sea. It certainly has plenty to be proud of. Sharp-eyed viewers may notice, however, that any beachfront property shown in the film looks suspiciously like the Mekong.

In a message preceding the opening credits, GTH says it hopes the film will inspire all Southeast Asians to excel, and that one day, perhaps, a team from this part of the globe will play in the World Cup. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that this film is entirely fictional.

Most of the laughs come in the scenes that feature an ambiguously effeminate (and Thai) team trainer, who flexes his muscles and smiles at all the guys, making them feel just a little uncomfortable. Whenever one of the players has a cramp, the guy is on top of things, spreading legs and massaging away. Is he gay? It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's the funniest thing in this movie, political correctness be damned.

"Lucky Loser" follows the formulaic pattern of any sports comedy. It could be from anywhere, about any sport.

The main protagonist is the coach, Pongnarin Ulice (Jakrit Panichpatikam), Thailand's greatest player and a star in England's Premier League. When there's an opening for a coach on the Thai side, he hangs up his cleats and comes home, hoping he'll be named. Instead, a Brazilian is chosen. (Teams hire foreign coaches all the time, right? So what if he's from Brazil?)

This disappoints Pongnarin's fiesty, football-crazy, gambling-addicted aunt Ming (Noi Po-ngam). She's just hit the lottery and was ready to donate millions to the Thai national side. But, since her nephew has been passed over for the coaching job, Ming decides she's going to support the Arvee team, which as an Isaan native, she feels a deep affinity for.

What follows are the typical scenes of the coach putting together a rag-tag team of losers and shaping them into a cohesive unit. He gets a guy who catches watermelons at the market to be the goalie. An aggressive dogcatcher becomes the team's attacking midfielder. Arvee's best player ever, banned for life because he can't control his temper, is coaxed out of his spiritual retreat in the jungle. And the hilltribesman who guided the coach on a trek is drafted as well, because he's got a kick that's out of this world. It's like something out of "Shaolin Soccer".

The last guy to join is a star Thai player who's defected to the Arvee side because he says he believes they can win, but it's actually because he's a prima donna who thinks he can outshine the rest of the players. There's also the urban hipster, who plays basketball and says things like "yo" and "man". He convinces his teammates to dye their hair (including the armpits) blond. They train in a freezer to acclimatise.

In their first matches, they don't follow the game plan and, of course, they lose. Finally, they pay attention and start putting his words in to action, and they win. Yay!

Then, for their last game (against the Thais. Boo!), the Arveeians find their strategy isn't working, so they have to throw out the book and whatever they can to win. Some of the life is sucked out of the film by moments of melodrama, with the coach wrestling with his feelings of loyalty to Thailand and his desire to win with his new team. There's also a love triangle, with one of the Arvee star players falling for the new Miss Universe. This makes the team's pretty-boy chef (Praew Prapintip), who's a childhood sweetheart of the striker, jealous. It's a sappy subplot, but it produces one of the best lines, when the guy asks his sweetheart why she didn't answer her phone. "It's just a missed call," she says, "not Miss Universe."

Wise Kwai

The Nation