Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos (2006)

Overrated

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

As someone who grew up in Northern New Jersey during the rise of the Cosmos in the late 70's/early 80's, I was looking forward to seeing this movie, and it looked so good in the trailers. While it did not play near me (or it came and went so fast I didn't notice), I was still looking forward to seeing this on DVD. However, as you can tell by my rating, I was very much disappointed. I didn't think it was possible to make this film so dull and plodding, but that's what was accomplished. Far too much time was spent on the Pre-Pele days. And their coverage of the Cosmos teams was incomplete and showed a lack of understanding. One example: They talk about the signing of Chinaglia with little hype, but talked about the signing of Beckenbauer as "the first time someone that good jumped to the NASL while still in his prime." In fact, it was Chinaglia who was the first great player to jump to the NASL, and he came over when he was 29 years old. Beckenbauer, on the other hand had been playing in World Cups since 1966, and came to the Cosmos in 1977 at the age of 32. Beckenbauer was still a great player, but like Pele, he was playing on the downside of his career. Indeed, Chinaglia became the greatest scorer in NASL history.Finally, the DVD had a "deleted scene" of the Cosmos having to play a phony Haitian team because the original team "jumped immigration." That was hysterical and something that few people knew about. This absolutely should have been in the original cut, compared to many of the other choices that Miramax made.

I really liked it, but it just moves by too fast.There were so many moments and subjects that they should have dwelled on a little longer,that they cut away too fast from.This may be because the attitude expressed early in the movie,about Americans' attention spans;that ours are so short,they can't focus long enough on the game of soccer(i.e. football)to appreciate it,and I think the filmmakers edited it to fit that,in the assumption that us Yanks wouldn't find it interesting if the film had been done like their football docs.Maybe they're right,maybe most of us wouldn't,but I know I would have,and I wish they had done so.They could have filled it up with so much more detail,more stories,and so on.Good ,but should have been much more.

I loved this flick and in many ways it beats the book by a mile as the interviews esp. of Cosmos personnel (hey, they even interviewed the guy in the Bugs Bunny mascot costume!) but there are a lot of generalizations and misinterpretations because I think it was done by a Brit from a soccer point of view.First of all, the football (as in American football) footage in reference to 1977 he used was of the USFL (TB Bandits vs. Houston Gamblers), a league which did not start until 1983. So it was obvious NFL Films would not cooperate with his flick but this sort of "throw a generic football clip in" doesn't cut it with North Americans, Mr. Director. It's sloppy film-making.The claim that the Cosmos were #1 in the NY sports market at the time is preposterous. That era from 1975-81 was when the NY Yankees rose from a decade of poor play and poorer attendance to lead the American League every single year in attendance plus go to four World Series, winning two. Sure the Cosmos were incredibly popular but to suggest baseball was suffering in NY under the Cosmos' glare is laughable. Add to that both the NY Jets and NY Giants of the NFL had a greater average attendance per game than the Cosmos.Anyway, it is an entertaining film esp, for those of us who grew up with and loved the NASL. As far as the guy who wished Cruyff was interviewed. he must have been asleep as the Dutch great makes a great comment on the shootout in the film.Lastly, this whole Cosmos were ahead of the curve in having 14 different nationalities on one team like they invented that. The year before the Cosmos joined the NASL, the 1970 champion Rochester Lancers had players from 12 different nations in their squad. Even hockey (Swedes, Finns and Cezchs came over) or baseball (always had Latin Americans since the '50s) had that mix...it's our immigrant, no import quotas in sports history.

Wow! What a blast from the past! I spent 5 years of my life working for the Cosmos in their ticket office- 1978-1983. I missed the early years, but got a real education from watching this film. It brought back great memories of the years I did spend there. When did we all get so old? If they hadn't given names on the bottom of the screen, I wouldn't have recognized half the people being interviewed.The clips of Pele and the early days of the Cosmos were a pleasure to see. Giorgio, well, I always considered him a bad guy, even more after seeing this film. I consider this a must see for anyone who was a Cosmos fan and a great education in U.S. soccer history for the younger folks!