- Released: 12 December 2006
- Directed by: Robert Vince
- Running time: 1 h 20 min
- Rating 2/5
Synopsis
Five puppies run away from home on the day before their adoption, only for their parents to be kidnapped by a dealer of exotic animals who plans to tell them to a rich kid.My Thoughts
Okay, so, full disclosure, I’ve never seen an actual Air Bud movie. I know what they’re about, but the Air Buddies movies were literally my introduction to the overarching series. But as someone who really doesn’t care much for any of the sports the Buddies’ father plays, I just never had any gusto to check out the Air Bud series and instead skipped straight to the Buddies, which seemed much more appealing to me at the time. So far I’ve only seen two Buddies movies, though. I’ve taken a look at Snow Buddies before on this blog, and now we’ll be taking a look at the first film. Wrong order I know.
Air Buddies is simple rescue story that ultimately falls short because of the bad writing and lazy characters. You can seriously sum up all the characters in this film with one word, including our mains. Rosebud is “girl”, B-Dawg is “the cool one”, Buddha is “spiritual”, etc. This goes for all our main characters. Heck, even Air Bud/Buddy is just “concerned father” and Molly is just “concerned mother”. Sorry if I’m not up to date with the Air Bud extended universe lore, but you’d really expect the titular character of the prequel series to be more capable or at least interesting than how he was portrayed in this.
The villains are boring caricatures and really have nothing going for them. They’re never intimidating. Honestly, the best villain character is the tiger. They’re barely in this but at least they look threatening.
The visuals effects haven’t aged well. They really just added talking mouth movements to the dogs, but it doesn’t look that good anymore by today’s standards. Sniffer’s way of talking also never looks right. It looks like he’s trying to swallow peanut butter rather than him actually talking.
The only good scenes are the ones with the wolf. Which I may be biased for because I love wolves. But it just is. Rose gets her crowning moment of awesome (the only good moment of any of the Buddies in the entire movie) and we get introduced to one of the only toned-down characters in the movie. Sure, the wolf does practically nothing but give them advice, but at least those scenes are mildly enjoyable.
The final scene where all the Buddies howl to feel some togetherness though they’re apart looks very ridiculous. They obviously have their mouths closed and are just looking up. They seriously couldn’t be bothered to CGI a mouth on them or something? It would’ve been more convincing if they’d filmed the puppies while panting looking up and adding a howling sound effect.
The humor is obviously very juvenile and also never really funny. Like Snow Buddies, I recommend you skip this one. I may take a look at the other Buddies movies later, may not.
Air Buddies is simple rescue story that ultimately falls short because of the bad writing and lazy characters. You can seriously sum up all the characters in this film with one word, including our mains. Rosebud is “girl”, B-Dawg is “the cool one”, Buddha is “spiritual”, etc. This goes for all our main characters. Heck, even Air Bud/Buddy is just “concerned father” and Molly is just “concerned mother”. Sorry if I’m not up to date with the Air Bud extended universe lore, but you’d really expect the titular character of the prequel series to be more capable or at least interesting than how he was portrayed in this.
The villains are boring caricatures and really have nothing going for them. They’re never intimidating. Honestly, the best villain character is the tiger. They’re barely in this but at least they look threatening.
The visuals effects haven’t aged well. They really just added talking mouth movements to the dogs, but it doesn’t look that good anymore by today’s standards. Sniffer’s way of talking also never looks right. It looks like he’s trying to swallow peanut butter rather than him actually talking.
The only good scenes are the ones with the wolf. Which I may be biased for because I love wolves. But it just is. Rose gets her crowning moment of awesome (the only good moment of any of the Buddies in the entire movie) and we get introduced to one of the only toned-down characters in the movie. Sure, the wolf does practically nothing but give them advice, but at least those scenes are mildly enjoyable.
The final scene where all the Buddies howl to feel some togetherness though they’re apart looks very ridiculous. They obviously have their mouths closed and are just looking up. They seriously couldn’t be bothered to CGI a mouth on them or something? It would’ve been more convincing if they’d filmed the puppies while panting looking up and adding a howling sound effect.
The humor is obviously very juvenile and also never really funny. Like Snow Buddies, I recommend you skip this one. I may take a look at the other Buddies movies later, may not.
No comments:
Post a Comment