D2: The Mighty Ducks

In terms of family movies, this is a heart warming tale of the kids from the first Mighty Ducks movie coming back to play for their country in some sort of all-world tournament. On a family movie scale, this movie isn’t even that bad. As a hockey movie, this breaks every rule in hockey, physics and common sense.

I don’t even know where to start on this movie because it is so ludicrous at points and has so many inconsistencies and glaring errors that Gary Bettman must be rolling in his grave.

First and foremost Coach Bombay is selecting a team for the upcoming Junior Goodwill Games in Los Angeles. Instead of picking the best players from around the country, Bombay in all his wisdom chooses a ragtag ethnic cross section of players including a cowboy, a spanish speedster and a black roller hockey player that somehow joins the team mid-season after the entire Team U.S.A is taken to the ghetto to play some street toughs. Did I mention that there was an Asian figure skater on the team? I’m guessing Erik Rasmussen, Marty Reasoner, Matt Cullen, and Tom Poti were too busy that summer to represent their country in a made up tournament.

Secondly we have the opponents in this tournament and the total fuck you this movie sends Canada and their youth hockey programs. Somehow the Mighty Ducks, or Team U.S.A I should say, disposes of Team Canada with ease and they are pretty much never mentioned again. So obviously, the next choice for Hockey World Power would be Russia or maybe Sweden right? NO it is the dominant hockey country of ICELAND. Team U.S.A’s rival and greatest competitor in this movie is the country of Iceland. Just off the top of my head I can only name one player in the NHL drafted out of Iceland. His name is Stephan Reykivakolaid, never heard of him? That’s because I made him up. So somehow the country of Iceland, a country that only has one man-made ice rink built in 1987 trained a group of kids for 9 years and became the world’s fastest rising hockey power. It would have made as much sense to put the Jamaican bobsled team out there against Team U.S.A. Sanka you dead? Ya man.

The kicker in this movie is the blatant disregard for any sort of rules set up to play the game of hockey. At one point in the movie, the cowboy hockey player takes off his helmet, puts on a cowboy hat and lassos two Icelandic players and low and behold receives a penalty for lassoing! Mid way through the championship game, father time comes in and gives Team U.S.A the new Mighty Ducks jerseys with the new Mighty Ducks logo on them. Don’t worry, that wasn’t a marketing ploy at all! How do the team members that had nothing to do with the first movie feel about this change? Who cares! They’re playing Iceland!

The final straw has to be how this championship game ends. With Team Mighty Ducks U.S.A or whatever down by one goal, Coach Bombay calls a timeout and mayhem ensues. The play starts behind the net and the flying V begins, this is all well and good but the goalie is in the center of the V! So lets forget that any self respecting hockey fan already knows that goalies can’t cross their own blue line without getting a penalty. The puck is going down the ice in the flying V and remember that the goalie (Goldberg) has been playing the entire game so we can only assume its him in the middle of this mess. There is a bunch of disorganized Iceland players wondering what the hell is going on and finally the puck goes back to the point to the Team U.S.A GOALIE and as he lifts off his goalie mask we see who? Not Goldberg but the BLACK KID THE TEAM PICKED UP FROM THE GHETTO. Somehow in the 30 second time out Coach Bombay took, Goldberg, the original goalie got out of his equipment and the ghetto kid strapped on the pads and pants and chest protector and skates. All this happened while Iceland was watching the 1996 Presidential Election on the Jumbotron I’m guessing? I hear Coach Wolf Stansson voted for Bob Dole!

Anyways the knuckle-puck wielding black ghetto kid scores and Team U.S.A wins in a shootout as I stare in amazement as to what exactly happened to the last 106 minutes of my life.

All in all, its not a bad watch but you have to ignore the onslaught of marketing, sports cliches running a muck and the cheesiest cameos by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Cam Neely, Chris Chelios, Luc Robitaille, Greg Louganis for some reason? and worst of all Kristi Yamaguchi! Only Wayne Gretzky saves this movie from total cheesy annihilation.

Tags: Coach Bombay, hockey, Mighty Ducks, movie, NHL, Team U.S.A, Wayne Gretzky