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Let's leave animals on the sidelines. Or: Attack of the Animals-Playing-Sports Movies Plague of Doom™.I’ve never been very into ‘kids’ movies. Even when I was little. Sure there were some that I liked, and watched, but for the most part they were stuff that I’d find funny even now (Muppets, anyone?).
I mean, what in then hell are these people thinking? One was popular so let’s make 12? Now, some of these movies are worse than others. That I’ll concede, but none have ever qualified as a “good” movie. Let’s start with the oldest one I can remember – Gus. Made in 1976 by Disney (shocking, you say?), it featured a mule that kicked field goals, and made the “California Atoms” win the something-or-other. I read the book. It wasn’t that good, but it was tolerable. Though maybe not quite as good as Bubba—I mean bobby says.
 Move forward 21 years.
Enter: Air Bud. Harbinger of the Animal-Playing-Sports Plague of Doom™. It wasn’t so terrible by itself. I didn’t wince at the previews, just dismissed it as another lame Disney movie involving children and animals. According to some Amazon.com reviewers, it was even a decent movie. Of course, I could go on making fun of Amazon reviews, but I’ll just let a couple of them speak for themselves.
Next came Air Bud: Golden Receiver. As of three movies about the exact same thing weren’t enough, two back-to-back is really pushing it.
The Bud movie was about soccer. Well it’s been another year (at least) and that means it must be time for more of the same. Seeing as those other movies obviously did well in the box office, thanks to their legions of highly cultured fans *cough*. So let’s try to refrain from gasping with astonishment as even more movies are released. Air Bud: 7th Inning Fetch, and MVP: Most Vertical Primate.
So there’s the tally. Seven movies in this lame-ass genre, four of them in the same series. I couldn’t even find a poster or any official information about Bud IV. Maybe Disney is too embarrassed to release any public information. It’s not that I have anything against animals, or them playing sports. It’s just that after awhile these movies get so pathetically cliché that I want to hurt whoever was responsible for giving them the green light. There isn’t even any originality anymore. At least time travel movies try to be a little different sometimes. But I’ll rant about them some other time. What’s that you say? It’s equally pathetic that I typed two pages about it? Well who invited you here? Get off my site :P
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Through the years, genres have come and gone, but the latest one that I hold a semi-psychotic grudge against is movies involving animals playing sports, usually by Disney.
Some genius at Disney looks at sales records for Gus and says “Wow! We made almost no money on that stupid movie about a mule playing football! Let’s change the animal and the sport and try again!”
The plot is so cliché it’s pathetic. The kid starts playing football for his high school team, which (gee, we’ve never seen this before in a movie) is going to be cut and the coach fired unless they have a winning season. What to do? I’m not even going to answer that.
Then things got really scary. In 2000, two more movies were released. Another episode of the Bud saga, and a movie called MVP: Most Valuable Primate. Now, I personally think that Disney monkey movies should be outlawed all together, but combined with the Animal-Playing-Sports Plague of Doom™ genre was just too much.
I didn’t even bother looking up the specifics.
Yes, about a dog that plays baseball, and a skateboarding monkey. God knows I’ve been waiting for years for them to make a movie about a skateboarding monkey. Oh wait, no I haven’t.