Once In A Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story Of The New York Cosmos

Despite the title, this is less a soccer documentary than a corporate hagiography along the lines of The Last Mogul or The Kid Stays in the Picture; its real hero isn’t Cosmos star Pele (who wisely declined to be interviewed), but Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications, which owned the team. The most important secondary figures are Ross’s associates, sycophants, and acquisitions, some of whom happened to play soccer and are intermittently paraded before us as prize pets. (Henry Kissinger makes a guest appearance too, as he does in The Kid Stays in the Picture, though it’s unclear whether he’s supposed to enhance Ross or vice versa.) The distributor is Miramax, so maybe this is just a dry run for The Harvey Weinstein Story. PG-13, 97 min. (JR)

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