Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story is a 2019 documentary about one of the most celebrated and winningest goalies in the NHL.
If you’re like me, you’re probably not a huge sports fan per se, not tying yourself to one team or game but simply appreciate greatly the incredible achievements of what these athletes do, from hitting home runs to power dunks to scoring goals and more. It’s truly amazing what a person (and team) with homegrown talent and years of concentrated training can do on the professional level.
With director Don Metz‘s new documentary, we get up close and personal with one such person, a hockey goalie from Canada who broke down a number of barriers in the sport and eventually became listed as one of the best ever to play the game. That’s of course Grant Fuhr, who played in the National Hockey League from 1981 to 2000, being part of five Stanley Cup wins and earning numerous other awards for his accomplishments in the net.
Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story allows Grant to tell his own story, reflecting on his long career and the incredible history behind some of the sport’s most memorable moments. Joining him are a big cast of hockey names, with coaches and teammates offering their own memories of time on the ice with Fuhr, including Wayne Gretzky, who outright calls Fuhr the greatest goalie of all time.
The film is loaded with archival footage and tracks Fuhr’s rise from awkward amatuer status to his draft into the Edmonton Oilers, where he famously lost his opener and then set a still unbroken record for first year goalies of going 23 games undefeated. That was in 1981. The older and wiser Fuhr talks openly to the camera about his state of mind, his desires and ambitions in those early years, then gets deeply personal about substance abuse in dealing with recovery from shoulder surgery, leaving him with a long suspension and much media attention. It’s quite something to give a man a space to look back on such a private matter that the whole world judged.
Fuhr is in the books for being the first black (he was born to an African Canadian parent and a Caucasian parent) player to win the Stanley Cup and the first black player inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. That’s important, though the film wisely gets that out of the way early, with it noted that no one cared about the color of his skin and let his action on the rink speak for itself. Instead, Metz puts the weight of the story on what it means to be a top tier athlete, the physical consequences of such, and the drama of both being incredibly successful but also embroiled in a publicly debated ordeal with high profile drug abuse.
Like many quality-made sports documentaries, it’s far less about the sport itself but the human drama it generates. Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story is just that, meaning you don’t need to be a fan of the game to get the message, the inspiring journey of a man devoted to what he does best a truly entertaining and often moving experience. Recommended.
Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story is now available on all major VOD and Cable VOD platforms including iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, and iNDEMAND