In just a few weeks, we’ll find out what Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell really thinks of quarterback J.J. McCarthy.

The NFL trade/free agency period begins on March 11. The level of veteran QB that O’Connell brings in to compete with McCarthy for next season’s starting job will indicate the level of confidence the Vikings have in McCarthy going forward.

Kirk Cousins, Kyler Murray and Mac Jones remain the Vikings’ best bets. Trading for San Francisco’s Jones would probably cost the Vikings a second-round draft pick, a pick the Vikings cannot afford to lose.

If Cousins, 37, isn’t offered an acceptable deal — expected to be in the one-year, $20 million range with incentives and a guarantee to be the starter — chances seem good that he’ll move to national TV analysis. He’s already pretty good at it and already has made more than $300 million during 14 seasons as a player.

—There also is a chance the Vikings could end up with Jimmy Garoppolo or Geno Smith at quarterback. That would indicate the Vikings plan to ride into another season with McCarthy.

Derek Carr, 34, would seem another possibility, but he recently emphasized he’d only step back from retirement for a Super Bowl contender.

—April’s draft is considered mediocre for quarterbacks, but the 2027 draft is projected as better.

—John Schneider, the Seattle manager who signed free agent QB Sam Darnold after the Vikings opted not to franchise tag the former Viking and built the 2026 Super Bowl champions, was a 5-foot-7 running back for the University of St. Thomas under coach Vic Wallace in 1989-90.

Schneider injured both shoulders during his 1989 freshman season, forcing him to give up his playing career. He graduated from St. Thomas in 1993. Now he’s the fourth-longest currently tenured GM in the NFL.

—The Seahawks are in the process of being sold and seeking at least $9 billion. The Vikings are valued at $6.3 billion according to Forbes magazine.

It would seem prudent for the Vikings, who are without a GM, to at least seek permission to talk with Schneider, who is signed through 2031. Things can change, though, with new ownership.

Take, for instance, Derek Falvey. His recent exodus as Twins baseball-business operations president just before spring training came down to new ownership (Tom Pohlad) not having chosen Falvey to lead, and Falvey choosing not to work for new ownership.

By the way, multiple MLB teams, including major market teams, tried to convince Falvey to leave Minnesota when he was in charge. No doubt he’ll be back leading a baseball operation within a couple of years.

—There are 32 teams in the NHL. As they headed into the Olympic break, the Wild were legitimately one of the top three teams in the league with Colorado and Dallas. All three are in the same Central Division, which this season is untimely.

The Wild have 24 regular-season games left. If the Avalanche, Stars and Wild finish the way they are now, one of those teams will be knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. And by the end of the second round, two of the top three teams will be knocked out.

—The last time NHL teams played in the Olympics was 2014. Virtually every time there has been an Olympic-schedule break, some NHL teams came back way better and some teams way worse.

The Wild have eight players in the Olympics. They entered the Games in Milan having won five straight and were 6-0-1 in their past seven.

Nobody knows how the Wild will perform upon their return.

“There are two downsides to having players in the Olympics,” Wild owner Craig Leipold told the Pioneer Press. “No. 1, shutting the league down for three weeks, particularly for those teams — and I’d put us in this category — that have good momentum, are playing well. You like the camaraderie, and now all of a sudden everybody leaves for three weeks.

“I don’t like that. That bothers me.”

Leipold’s other concern, of course, is injuries. “You can’t afford to have injuries this time of the year,” he said.

—Despite the Twins’ 92-loss season last year, and a price increase for the 400-premium seat Champions Club at Target Field this year, there is a waiting list, meaning demand for a premium on-field product remains. A Twins playoff ticket just two-and-a-half years ago was the hottest ticket in town.

—As expected, Gophers football coach P.J. Fleck last week officially received another pay increase, this time in the form of what’s termed a management bonus of $700,000. That brings his annual compensation to $7.9 million.

Fleck, 45, retains his old-fashion values, which the university appreciates. No hats are allowed by players in the Gophers football building, no earrings, collared shirts are required in classes, and players must sit in the first two rows. The football team’s grade-point average is over 3.4, extremely rare for the sport, and the team hasn’t been on the front page of newspapers for doing stupid things.

—Meanwhile, it doesn’t get enough attention, but overall, Gophers athletes last year finished among the top public universities in the country with a composite grade-point average just under 3.5 and graduation rate between 93 and 97 percent.

—After next season, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, 40, will have three years remaining on a contract averaging $12 million a year.

—Those were St. Paul Parks and Recreation director Andy Rodriguez, local author Pat Harris and Ryder Cup producer Joe Gallagher from St. Paul lunching last week with Dave Winfield at the hall of famer’s Bel Air, Calif., home, where he was presented with a bronze miniature version of the life-size Winfield statue to be unveiled at Dunning Playground in May.

—Former Cretin-Derham Hall and University of St. Thomas star guard Sean Sweeney, who is associate head coach of the San Antonio Spurs, is a coach for the Western Conference in the NBA all-star weekend in Los Angeles.

—Faribault native Bruce Smith, the late running back who is the Gophers’ only Heisman Trophy winner (1941), would have turned 106 years old last week.

Mark Dusbabek, 61, the former Gophers-Vikings linebacker who is national TV rules analyst for CBS and NBC, is from Faribault.

“(Bruce’s) dad Lucius was a practicing attorney in Faribault when I received my scholarship offer,” Dusbabek texted former Gophers teammate Ray Hitchcock the other day. “He had me come visit him at his office and told me the responsibility I had to go to the U of M.”

Dusbabek pointed out that while Smith was in New York to accept the Heisman award, Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan.

“He ended up rewriting his acceptance speech to reflect on the times and incident,” Dusbabek said.

—It’s unlikely because of cost, but North Dakota State’s move last week to the Mountain West Conference for football at least theoretically would seem an opportunity for the University of St. Thomas to move from the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League to the Missouri Valley Football Conference.

—The Twins again will have Securian advertising patches on their uniforms. It’ll be the second year of a four-year deal with the St. Paul financial firm.

—Kristine Reese, daughter of popular former Twins first baseman Rich Reese, is an instructor at the noted Vision 54 golf academy in Scottsdale, Ariz., and has been ranked the state’s best teacher by Golf Digest.

—After surveying 358 facilities, the Minnesota Golf Association reports municipal play in the state was up 2 percent, and private club play up 2.3 percent last year.

—It appears Twins fans will get a chance to see future hall of famer Justin Verlander, who turns 43 next week, in person a couple of times this season, first during an April 6-9 series against the Detroit Tigers. Verlander signed a one-year, $13 million deal with the Twins’ Central Division rivals last week.

Don’t print that

—The Vikings’ uncertain quarterback situation has to be concerning for wide receiver Justin Jefferson, who as the team’s star has a direct line to ownership. Going public with any concern could be extremely damaging to the team.

—That the Vikings fired general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah wasn’t surprising. What remains surprising was the timing. Usually, front office dismissals are done a day or so after the season, but the Vikings waited nearly a month to fire Adofo-Mensah.

There are different theories as to why the Vikings waited to let go of their four-year GM. One theory was that watching Sam Darnold brilliantly lead the Seahawks to the Super Bowl with the 31-27 NFC championship victory over the Rams was emotional for owners Zygi and Mark Wilf.

The Vikings, remember, could have retained Darnold with a one-year franchise tag of $40 million. Instead Darnold signed with Seattle for $100.5 million for three years.

No doubt Darnold leading Seattle to a Super Bowl championship has been a great public embarrassment for the Wilfs, who have dearly sought the Lombardi Trophy for 21 years. Last Sunday, Darnold had no turnovers in leading the Seahawks to their 29-13 victory over New England, and he played throughout the playoffs with zero turnovers.

—Meanwhile, what we don’t know yet is what the Wilfs are really thinking. Do they plan to bring in a general manager with stature who can lead the organization and actually push back against opinions from coach Kevin O’Connell or defensive coordinator Brian Flores? Or are the Wilfs looking for a GM who will defer to O’Connell? The head coach is now the guy with the real power.

We won’t know the answers until early May, when the new GM is expected to be hired.

—There’s buzz that the reason it took so long for the Vikings to re-sign Flores ($6 million a year) is that he wasn’t a fan of Adofo-Mensah.

—The Vikings have paid heartily for new hires Frank Smith, former Miami offensive coordinator, and Ryan Nielsen, a former Jacksonville defensive coordinator.

By the way, it wouldn’t be surprising if Adofo-Mensah ends up on the business side of some NBA team. It’s unclear what a buyout of his recent contract extension includes. When the Vikings fired coach Mike Zimmer four years ago, he had two years left on his contract for $16 million, so he essentially sat home and got paid.

—Winning the Super Bowl was worth $178,000 per Seahawks player. Sportico points out that California, which has the highest income tax of any state and where the big game was prepped for eight days and played, means Darnold’s estimated taxes for the week are $249,000.

—Darnold this season achieved a myriad of postseason bonuses, including $2.5 million for winning the Super Bowl. No doubt the Seahawks will extend Darnold’s $100.5 million, three-year contract with a deal worth about $50 million annually. He’s only 28 years old.

Darnold won 14 games for the Vikings in 2025 for a salary of $10 million before the Vikings allowed him to become a free agent.

—Despite an anticipated payroll in the $105 million range (bottom five in baseball), Twins business operations are expected to lose money this year. The Twins are not currently profitable, which is among reasons several inquiring buyers, after seeing the financials, said no thanks to the club’s $1.75 billion asking price.

Nearly half of Twins salaries will go to four players: Pablo Lopez, Byron Buxton, Ryan Jeffers and Joe Ryan.

—Major League Baseball this year has become a $12 billion industry. It’s a virtual certainty that the 2027 season will bring the game’s fifth lockout since 1973. The game’s labor agreement expires on Dec. 1 this year.

Of the pending lockout, it can be safely argued that baseball’s players union is undefeated.

—Texas Tech is ranked No. 16, and guard Nolan Groves is averaging 0.9 points and 6.4 minutes a game on a $125,000 per year NIL deal. Don’t be surprised if the former Orono star ends up with the Gophers for his sophomore season.

—Runner-up for the Twins’ managing job that Derek Shelton got last October was James Rowson, the Twins’ former hitting coach who is hitting coach for the New York Yankees. After Shelton got the job, he tried to hire Rowson as his bench coach, but the Yankees declined permission. Had he been permitted, people who know say Rowson would have accepted a Twins bench coaching offer.

—Ex-Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, in spring training with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a special assistant, was to be paid $2 million this year for the final year of his Twins deal. That will be decreased slightly, via an offset with his Dodgers’ pay.

Twins ownership couldn’t have been thrilled that Derek Falvey picked up Baldelli’s contract option for 2026 last spring, then fired him in September.

—As coach of the Patriots, Bill Belichick won six Super Bowls but was bypassed in recent Pro Football Hall of Fame voting in his first year of eligibility. As coach of the Vikings, Bud Grant, whose teams lost each of their four Super Bowls, was elected to the hall 10 years after retirement.

—Inexplicable: It took seven years for Wayzata grad James Laurinaitis, the former Ohio State star who won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the country’s best defensive player and Butkus Award as the nation’s best linebacker, to be elected to the College Football Hall of Fame this year.

—It looks as if either of Gophers men’s basketball commits, Nolen Anderson of Wayzata or Cedric Tomes of East Ridge, will win this season’s Minnesota Mr. Basketball Award.

—Hall of fame former Twin Bert Blyleven, after serving as pitching coach for the Netherlands for the past four World Baseball Classics, won’t be back for this year’s tournament next month.

Overheard

—ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, on the Vikings’ decision last year not to franchise tag QB Sam Darnold for $40 million: “I would not have blamed Justin Jefferson if he had asked to be traded. That’s how disgusted he should have been.”

FILE – Minnesota Vikings wide receivers Adam Thielen, left, and Justin Jefferson (18) watch from the sideline during the second half of an NFL football game against the Detroit Lions, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson, File)
Pablo Lopez of the Minnesota Twins poses for a portrait at Lee Health Sports Complex during the Minnesota Twins Photo Day on Feb. 21, 2025 at the Lee County Sports Complex in Fort Myers, Florida. (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)
Stephen A. Smith attends ESPN: The Party 2017 held on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, in Houston, Texas. (Photo by John Salangsang/Invision/AP) (John Salangsang, John Salangsang)

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With three films now under her belt, the auteurist obsessions of English writer/director Emerald Fennell are becoming obvious, even though she’s not particularly subtle about her cinematic proclivities. In fact, her latest film, an “adaptation” of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel “Wuthering Heights” (the title is stylized with quotes as an ironic nod to the liberties Fennell takes with the text), opens with a direct acknowledgment of her own tendency to eroticize death.

We hear it first: groaning, wood squeaking, a kind of climax. As the picture comes up, we discover these sounds are not sexual in nature, but the noises coming from a man publicly hanged, a spectacle that sends the crowd, including a young Catherine Earnshaw (Charlotte Mellington), into an ecstatic frenzy. It’s a cheeky bait-and-switch from Fennell.

In her first film, “Promising Young Woman,” a troubled heroine sets out on a rape-revenge suicide mission; in her second, “Saltburn,” the antihero humps the grave of his dead best friend and dances naked through a mansion after he eradicates the family tree. Sex is never far from death, and death is inherently sexy in all of Fennell’s films, which she announces at the top of “Wuthering Heights.” But as the French say, the orgasm is, after all, “la petite mort,” the little death.

The hanging represents a kind of barbaric sensuality that will tempt Cathy over the course of her life, particularly in her relationship with her adopted brother (or “pet”) Heathcliff, a wretch from Liverpool (Owen Cooper) who grows into a strapping, rough, alluring young man (Jacob Elordi), who smolders intensely in the direction of the lovely, but still petulant, adult Cathy (Margot Robbie).

Forbidden, abject desire is the main theme that Fennell draws out from Brontë’s sprawling, tempestuous (and much adapted) novel, which she has abridged, condensed and elaborated upon to her own specific ends. It’s almost a fan fiction of sorts, as Fennell explores and experiments with the characters and story while inserting some daringly kinky sex.

Strange then, that “Wuthering Heights” feels so unsatisfying. Fennell boldly goes places the novel does not, but like her previous two films, it just adds up to a lot of empty provocation, without much to motivate or undergird this performative naughtiness. The film could use the boning of a good corset, pulled taut. Instead, it all feels a bit messy.

But Fennell loves mess. Cathy pranks and teases long-suffering Heathcliff, leaving eggs in his bed (he curiously fingers the yolks). When she experiences a sexual awakening with him while spying on a pair of servants in the barn, suddenly everything takes on a new texture, in which Fennell, the director, delights: a snail trail of slime on a window pane; bread dough as moist and manhandled as human flesh.

Wild and wind-whipped, Cathy is simultaneously repelled by Heathcliff and drawn to him; her sexuality rooted in disgust. She declares to her beleaguered maid and confidant Nelly (Hong Chau) that she can’t marry Heathcliff because it would “degrade” her. Fennell suggests that’s exactly what most women want Heathcliff to do.

Propelled by poverty and class consciousness, Cathy throws herself at a wealthy neighbor, Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), and finds herself trapped in an over-designed gilded cage, in an estate where the floors are painted blood red and the mantlepiece crawls with white plaster hands. Heathcliff disappears before returning with a moneyed glow-up, setting Cathy’s heart — and loins — aflutter once again. It’s a real friends-to-lovers-to-enemies- to-lovers tale.

But while there are a few memorably lusty moments — Elordi lifting Robbie by the corset strings is a thrill — and plenty of tightly bound bosom heaving, in general, Fennell overpromises and under-delivers on the sex in “Wuthering Heights.” She tries in vain to get her freak on, but most of the Cathy/Heathcliff stuff is too vanilla to get pulses racing, despite all their horny rain-soaked torment.

Robbie’s movie star charisma and stunning costumes by Jacqueline Durran make her the visual centerpiece of the film, but Elordi proves to be the necessary grounding force. As in his Oscar-nominated performance in “Frankenstein,” Elordi palpably sells Heathcliff’s anguish: his heartache at Cathy’s rejection, his insecurity, the cruelty he clings to as revenge.

In this playfully anachronistic version, Fennell puts forth some intriguing ideas and intoxicating cinematic images, but never manages to achieve a firm grasp on the tone of her “Wuthering Heights,” which whips like a loose skirt in the breeze, see-sawing between earnestness and arch, over-stylized melodrama. After two hours of oddly funny skulduggery and muddy rutting, she asks the audience to turn on the waterworks with a big, bloody show and a soapy montage. Alas, we’re all bone-dry, because none of the emotional components meaningfully cohere. The surface pleasures of Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” may be plenty, but the story itself, well, it never achieves climax.

‘Wuthering Heights’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for sexual content, some violent content and language)

Running time: 2:16

How to watch: In theaters Feb. 10

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Sharing with the 1989 Tom Hanks film a title, a vague premise, a little paranoid spirit and a Universal Studios backlot street, “The ‘Burbs,” now on Peacock, stars Keke Palmer and Jack Whitehall as newlywed new parents who have moved into the house he grew up in — his parents are on “a cruise forever” — in Hinkley Hills, the self-proclaimed “safest town in America.”

Well, obviously not. First of all, that’s not a real thing. But more to the point, no one’s going to make an eight-hour streaming series (ending in a cliffhanger) about an actually safe town. Even Sheriff Taylor had the occasion to welcome someone worse than Otis the town drunk into the Mayberry jail. In post-post-war American culture, suburbs and small towns are more often than not a stage for secrets, sorrows, scandals and satire. The stories of John Cheever, the novels of Stephen King, “The Stepford Wives,” “Blue Velvet” and its godchild “Twin Peaks,” “Desperate Housewives” (filmed on the same backlot street as “The ‘Burbs”), “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” last year’s “Grosse Pointe Garden Society,” which I mention in protest of its cancellation, are set there — it’s a long list.

Samira Fisher (Palmer) is a civil litigation lawyer still on maternity leave, a job reflecting her inquisitive, inquisitorial nature. Husband Rob (Whitehall) is a book editor, a fact referred to only twice in eight hours, but which allows for scenes in which he rides a soundstage commuter train to the big city (presumably New York) with boyhood friend and once-more next-door neighbor Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar), whose wife has just left him for their dentist. Samira, Naveen and Rory (Kyrie McAlpin), an overachieving late tween who has a merit badge in swaddling, a recommendation from Michelle Obama on her mother’s helper resume and a notary public’s license, are the only people of color in town, but racism isn’t really an issue, past a few raised eyebrows and odd comment. (“What a cute little mocha munchkin,” says a shifty librarian of baby Miles.) “It’s a nice area,” says Naveen, “and people like to think of themselves as nice, so they try to act nice until they’re actually nice.”

As we open, the Fishers have been tentatively residing on Ashfield Place (“over by Ashfield Street near Ashfield Crescent”), for some indeterminable short time. Apart from Naveen, neither has met, or as much as spoken to, any of their new neighbors, though Samira — feeling insecure postpartum and going out only at night to push Miles in his stroller — watches them through the window.

That will change, of course, or this will be one of television’s most radically conceived shows. Fascinated by a dilapidated, supposedly uninhabited house across the street — the same backlot where the Munsters mansion rose many years ago, for your drawer of fun facts — she’s drawn out into a mystery: The rumor is that 20 years earlier a teenage girl was killed and buried there by her parents, who subsequently disappeared. Rob says there’s nothing in it, and in a way that tells you maybe there is.

Left to right, Kapil Talwalkar as Naveen, Erica Dasher as Betsy, Jack Whitehall as Rob, Keke Palmer as Samira, in Peacock’s “The ‘Burbs.” (Elizabeth Morris/Peacock/TNS)

Out in the world, she will find her quirky Scooby Gang: widow Lynn (Julia Duffy), still attached to her late husband; Dana (Paula Pell), a retired Marine whose wife has been deployed to somewhere she can’t reveal; and Tod (Mark Proksch), a taciturn, deadpan “lone wolf” with an assortment of skills and a recumbent tricycle. (Their shared nemeses is Agnes, played by Danielle Kennedy, “our evil overlord,” the stiff-necked president of the homeowner’s association.) They bond over wine (drinking it) and close ranks around Samira after the police roust her on her own front porch. By the end of the first episode, Samira is determined to stay in Hinkley Hills, warmed by new friends, enchanted by the fireflies and in love with the “sweet suburban air.”

Weird goings-on in a creepy old “haunted” house is as basic a trope as exists in the horror-comedy mystery genre (see Martin and Lewis’ “Scared Stiff,” Bob Hope’s “The Ghost Breakers,” Abbott and Costello’s “Hold That Ghost” and assorted Three Stooges shorts). Suddenly there’s a “for sale” sign on this one, and just as suddenly, it’s sold. The new owner is Gary (Justin Kirk), who chases off anyone who comes around. Tod notes that the security system he’s installed is “overkill” for a private residence, necessary only “if you are in danger, you have something to hide — or both.” You are meant to regard him as suspicious; Samira does.

Created by Celeste Hughey, “The ‘Burbs” is pretty good, a good time — not the most elegant description, but probably the words that would come out of my mouth were you to ask me, conversationally, how it was. I suppose most of it adds up even if doesn’t always feel that way while watching it. It hops from tone to tone, and goes on a little long, in the modern manner, which dilutes the suspense. The characters are half-, let’s say three-quarters-formed, which is formed enough; everyone plays their part. The Hardy Boys were not known for psychological depth, and I read a lot of those books. A lot. Indeed, depth would only get in the way of the plot, which is primarily concerned with fooling you and fooling you again. When a character isn’t what they seem, making the false front too emotionally relatable is counterproductive; the viewer, using myself as an example, will feel cheated, annoyed. I won’t say whether that happens here.

That isn’t to say that the actors, every one of them, aren’t as good as can be. I’ll show up for Pell and Duffy anywhere, anytime. Proksch, well known to viewers of Tim Heidecker’s “On Cinema at the Cinema,” is weird in an original way. The British Whitehall, primarily known as a stand-up comedian, panel show guest and presenter, makes a fine romantic lead. Kirk is appealingly standoffish, if such a thing might be imagined. As Samira’s brother, Langston, RJ Cyler has only a small role, but he pops onscreen and, having the advantage of not being tied up in any of the major plotlines, provides something of a relief from them. And Palmer, an old pro at 32 — her career goes back to “Akeelah and the Bee” and Nickelodeon’s “True Jackson” — does all sorts of wonderful small things with her face and her voice. She’s an excellent Nancy Drew, and the world can never have enough of those.

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Sony Pictures Animation has made the world sit up and take notice in recent years thanks to its first two excellent “Spider-Verse” films, which have dazzled on the big screen, and the highly enjoyable and downright infectious “KPop Demon Hunters,” the most-watched title in the history of streaming giant Netflix, with more than 500 million global views.

Now the studio brings us “GOAT,” an underdog tale of a small hooper with a big heart.

While we won’t go so far as to call it “baaaaaad” — sorry, last goat joke, we promise — it’s not in the class of the other movies.

In auditoriums this week, “GOAT” is an example of what we’ll call “short-attention-span theater,” a flick too busy throwing stuff against the wall, with too little of it sticking, to find its emotional core.

It’s promising early on, with its expectedly great looks obvious from the start and an effective-enough introduction to its likable lead character, Will Harris (Caleb McLaughlin). We meet the scrappy goat when he’s just, well, a kid — as he’s being taken to see his first roarball game by his loving mom.

We should stop here and explain that roarball is a lot like basketball, only it’s played by animals and on potentially hazardous surfaces such as ice and one that sits precariously below stalactites. The co-ed game is played exclusively by large creatures, or “bigs,” who are happy to repeat a commonly used phrase: “Smalls don’t ball.”

Nonetheless, as Will watches the hometown Vineland Thorns — with his favorite player, superstar black leopard Jett Filmore (Gabrielle Union) — play, he says, “That’s gonna be me, Mom.”

A decade later, with Mom gone, diner delivery man Will holds on to that dream — trying to sneak practice time at a venue known as “the cage” before the bigs kick him out — even as he’s struggling to hold on to the room he’s renting.

Meanwhile, Jett is still the Thorns’ star, but she’s never brought home the Claw — the league’s championship trophy — with some fans suggesting that, deep into her career, “she’s washed.”

In town to take on the Thorns with his team, the Magma, reigning roarball league MVP Mane Attraction (Aaron Pierre), shows up at the cage to take on all ballers brave enough to go against him for cash. When Will puts up his rent money to face off with Mane, he gets the best of the cocky horse, if only momentarily.

Still, the little goat does enough to go viral, and he’s soon signed by the Thorns’ publicity-hungry warthog owner, Flo Everson (Jenifer Lewis), as the team’s sixth player. When asked by the excited Will if Jett is on board with this, Flo lies through her tusks by claiming it was the star’s idea.

Boy, that is not the case, as Jett — the de facto coach, holding much more power than the teams’ actual leader, Dennis Cooper (Patton Oswalt) — refuses to let Will on the court with her and the other team members: high-strung ostrich Olivia Burke (Nicola Coughlan); Modo Olachenko (Nick Kroll), a Komodo dragon with a big personality; defensive specialist rhino Archie Everhardt (McLaughlin’s “Stranger Things” castmate David Harbour), who’s also a girl dad; Lenny Williamson (Stephen Curry), a giraffe who also aspires to be a rapper.

Of course, Will’s time in purgatory lasts only so long, “GOAT” from there bouncing its narrative ball all over the place wildly. There’s a potentially compelling story about an older player mentoring and then passing the torch to a younger player, but the story by Nicolas Curcio and Peter Chiarelli and screenplay by Aaron Buchsbaum and Teddy Riley only flirts with it.

Director Tyree Dillihay oversees an affair that is energetic and likely to appeal to plenty of young viewers but decidedly lacking in strong storytelling. “GOAT,” which gets some mileage out of the dual meaning of the word, which in sports also is an acronym for “greatest of all time,” succeeds in celebrating the culture that surrounds basketball. That aspect of the movie takes it only so far, however.

Again, it does look pretty darn cool, the filmmakers utilizing tech developed for video games, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, for some of its undeniable razzle-dazzle. Plus, the character designs are distinct and the world they inhabit is well-conceived and executed.

And “GOAT” does deliver a few humorous moments, our favorite being a frustrated Jett putting in earbuds to listen to a song in which a cat repeatedly sings “meow,” but it’s not exactly a laugh riot.

Lastly, the voice performances are solid, with “Stranger Things” star McLaughlin helping to craft Will into an appealing hero.

The movie’s ties to real-world basketball include Union, wife of retired NBA star Dwyane Wade, and, of course, Curry, a longtime star for the Golden State Warriors. However, even the use of Curry feels off; why have arguably the greatest of all time when it comes to long-distance shooting not voice a sharp shooter in the movie?

“GOAT” has some game, but for all the shots it takes, it scores too few points.

‘GOAT’

2 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG (for some rude humor and brief mild language)

Running time: 1:40

How to watch: In theaters Feb. 13

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