Emilio Estevez returns to an extension of the Disney + TV series from the popular film franchise that yielded several films, an animation program and a successful NHL team.
Let’s get the controversial opinion out of the way: I think the original Powerful ducks movie is OK.
Excuse me.
It is a widespread Xerox and focused on the hockey of The Bad News Bears with most of the sanded contours, but that’s it with great pride. Nothing is particularly adult or nuanced in any of its complications, but the sincere and emotional moments are satisfying, regardless of your age.
What I most admire The Mighty Ducks, in its original form, is its efficiency. Victory defense attorney at any cost Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) is reluctantly training a youth hockey team in 15 minutes and his reluctance lasts perhaps two scenes. He starts the movie as a drunken idiot, but perhaps from a third of the way, his character flaws are limited to a moment of poorly timed sarcasm and a love of extravagant gadget games. After that, most of the suspense is related to Joshua Jackson’s uniform design, coordinated quacks and haircut. Gordon’s alcoholism, horndogging and law degree are magically cured.
In order to The Mighty Ducks to become a franchise, increasingly strange complications had to be invented. And along with the decreased efficiency of the product, my pleasure has also decreased.
Continuing this Disney + franchise, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers does many of the same things as films, and does them with respect. The young cast is quite solid, the inclusive message is very positive and the awareness of the underdog sports movie clichés and how to use them is well adjusted. However, by taking a custom-made brand for contained bites and expanding it to 10 half-hour episodes, the series practically depletes this engine from any efficiency. After only three episodes sent to the critics, I was finding the program discreet and friendly, but lacking momentum.
The necessary inversion of premises in Game changers is that, over the years, the Ducks have become like the Hawks in the original film – an unbeatable and hateful group of bullies trained by Reilly from Letterkenny (Dylan Playfair, an unlikely choice as Lane Smith of his generation). The new Ducks are so cruel that, despite their best efforts, 12-year-old Evan (Brady Noon) fails to join the team, forcing his paralegal mother Alex (Lauren Graham) to boldly attempt to assemble a new ragged squad of children who they want to play just for fun. It is a group that includes a Jewish boy who prefers podcast (Nick from Maxwell Simkins), a fantasy enthusiast with anger issues (Lauren from Bella Higginbotham), a video game expert who prefers not to leave his basement (Koob from Luke Islam) and a new boy from Toronto (Kiefer O’Reilly). They are uniformly inept, so Evan really hopes to recruit his best friend / crush, Sofi (Swayam Bhatia), but she is a Pata, and her parents really enjoy filling out her college curriculum.
Now you might think that it would be obvious that Gordon de Estevez would return as the coach of the Ducks, having become everything he has come to despise and having to work to get back to decency. Instead, circumstances have turned Gordon into a petty man who hides on the slowly used ice rink. Gordon has returned to his feigned hatred for hockey and children since the beginning of the first film and I don’t know if that counts as a spoiler, but he has some important lessons to learn again. So if this new incarnation of Gordon is not the most obvious choice, it is the second most obvious choice, which could almost be the mantra of the entire series.
Adapted by Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa with original creator Steve Brill, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers it’s actually much more precisely written on a dialogue level than the first film – or at least it seems that because if you’re going to have a heroine whose only appreciable feature is that when she gets nervous, she speaks fast, basically there is no one you’d rather have than Graham. Alex has no visible bow and his only visible personality is “She wants her son to be happy”; although this may not be Lauren Graham’s most complete use, it at least benefits the show. Graham’s energetic snark and Estevez’s laconic snark go well together, and there doesn’t seem to be an ounce of romantic possibility between them – this is perhaps my favorite part of the show so far and the one that will surely be abandoned uselessly.
On a narrative level, Game changers it is more flabby. Adapting to the program’s likely target audience, Game changers it is focused on children and, initially, everyone is interpreted in a completely competent and completely uninteresting way as characters. They essentially exist as a stretching strategy, a story fill to distract us from the fact that we only have one hockey game per episode. Some of the kids (Simkins and Higginbotham in particular) are funny and some of the kids (Bhatia in particular) suggest potential as actors, but if all they want to do is spin the wheel and repeat family stereotypes, it will lose My attention. In a three-episode spree, this is bad. For a program that needs to sustain the audience week by week, this is worse.
Game changers could use a little more of the visual zaniness that Stephen Herek brought to the first film. Not exactly what the movie is known for, but sequences like the crazy one Our classThe introduction of style to the hockey kids is part of how the film keeps their attention. There is a lot of physical comedy in the film that enhances and fuels hockey action. In contrast, for half of these new children, their inability to play is defined by their inability to skate, so they just stand still, which is not funny.
I would add that the Ducks, the logo and the general approach of the team proved to be so successful that an NHL expansion franchise took its name and then had to change its name and brand because they were so closely associated with the film. The name and uniforms of the new misfit team will not have, I can safely say, similar powers.
But am I going to watch a few more episodes of Graham and Estevez playing and the kids standing on the ice? Yes, probably. The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers everything is fine, but it matches the pedestal on which I place the film. If you have more reverence, your disappointment may be greater.
Cast: Lauren Graham, Emilio Estevez, Brady Noon, Maxwell Simkins, Swayam Bhatia, Luke Islam, Kiefer O’Reilly, Taegen Burns, Bella Higginbotham, DJ Watts
Showrunners: Josh Goldsmith and Cathy Yuspa
New episodes premiere on Fridays at Disney + from March 26