Air Bud 3

With a new term comes another football season to get through but this year a new player from England (Emma Putter) offers some hope to the team of no-hopers who's previous best player was a dog. Josh however immediately falls for his new teammate – just as his dog has fallen for her dog. As Josh frantically tries to control his hormones and still play for the team, a pair of thieves are eyeing up Air Bud as a good money spinner if they can kidnap him away from the Framm's. However things are even more complicated by the news that Air Bud is much, much better than Josh at convincing females to have sex with him and thus puppies are on the way.

Having watched one Air Bud I yet again showed the world how stubborn and stupid I am by returning to watch part 3. Obviously I was worried about how I would cope picking up the narrative having missed out on seeing Golden Retriever. Essentially the plot is a lazy mess of Home Alone criminals, dogs hitting balls with their noses and teenagers fumbling awkwardly towards their first awkward fumble. Needless to say it is a fairly uninteresting and uninspiring film that will keep your young children entertained but, when you think about it, so would a rattle snake but would you put your young 'uns in front of that? The film is boring and it pretty much falls flat at every step. The plot is rubbish; the teenage romance is bland as you like and the attempts at humour would have failed too but luckily the film decided not to even try to be funny. The sports action is same old same old and is not enough to cover all the cracks.

The cast range from the serviceable to the hilariously bad. Zegers is bland but suits this type of film as a clean-cut youth. However he performs like Orson Welles in his prime when compared to his co-lead Bouck who leads a family of bad accents with a terrible version of English that would have given Mr Fogg a run for his money in terms of how fast she takes it round the world – is it LA? English? Irish? Australian? She is cute but she wanders all over the place and the nearest she gets to English is a sort of forced posh cockney that would make Dick Van Dyke laugh. The rest of the cast are not as awful as her but nobody marks themselves out even though this is the sort of film where some adult normally gives knowing winks all the way through to at least appeal to the adult audience.

Generally rubbish then but I suppose the very young children it is aimed at will like it – but are you really so hard up for kids entertainment that you need to put them in front of this? Laughably basic at times and boringly bland at others, this is one to just ignore.

At least if you're a Disney fanatic (well, of the variety who loves their live-action films as well as the animated stuff), if you're a kid, if you're a kid at heart almost to the extent that you hardly realize you're an adult, if you love absolutely any film that features animals, especially when they're doing tricks, or if you're just not too demanding, Air Bud: World Pup is somewhat enjoyable to watch. I'm a Disney fanatic. I enjoyed this film enough, and I'll gladly watch it again.

But boy does it have a lot of problems. The main flaw arises from a combination of too many characters, too many plot threads and not enough time to take care of them all. In the space of 82 minutes, we've got adults getting married, teens falling in love and trying not to be awkward at it, teen competition for love and jealousy, preteens playing spy games, dogs falling in love, dogs playing soccer, dogs having puppies, manipulative parents who'll do anything to make their kids win being taught a lesson by their kids, housekeeper dilemmas, and crooks cooking up and executing elaborate plots. I'm probably forgetting something, but that's 10 big plot issues to be dealt with, with less than 10 minutes per thread to deal with them, and presumably weave them into a coherent whole that's both not too complicated--this is a kids' film, after all--and that's also humorous and heartwarming. Not surprisingly, director Bill Bannerman, on his first turn being completely in charge (he has a lot of previous second unit experience), wasn't quite up to the task. I'm sure it didn't help that there were at least three screenwriters involved, and probably dictating producers, as well.

The end result is that Air Bud: World Pup is extremely choppy. Events occur with little justification, and worse, often little explanation. People figure out and do things primarily because they need to--and fast--so that everything can arrive where it needs to arrive in less than 90 minutes. From one cut to the next, time might jump ahead six months or so. We have both adults who seem like maybe they're mentally disabled and kids who just intuitively figure out what a dog is thinking and rush into some unexpected action. Some of the threads should have simply been removed, because it's difficult to become too engaged in the film when as soon as you're introduced to an idea, it's already passed you by.

Also not helping is the fact that one of the threads is basically a rip-off of One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), minus a Cruella De Vil character. And another problem is that given the way the film is edited, I have to assume that the dog, Air Bud, probably couldn't do much with the soccer ball. Unlike the first two films, a dog playing a sport is almost an afterthought here, and when we see him, it's in very quick glimpses; every once in a while, these snippets appear to be even aided by computer animation.

Yet, for someone like me, there's a cheesy charm to Air Bud: World Pup. The script and performances often teeter between ridiculous, hokey and kinda clichéd. I tend to like that combination. It makes the film both a bit predictable and subtly bizarre. And at times, like the ending, when the film completely abandons consistency and basically becomes a commercial for the U.S. Women's Soccer Team, Air Bud: World Pup is so blatantly tacky that you can't help but love it.

Dogs rule! The air bud movies totally show that, and i love the fact that they used soccer! I would have liked to see Mia Hamm, but the other superstars are great too. A few of the actors are cheesy, but the animal training is great! But lets just hope that next time they include a yellow lab... haha! lol Also, "Tammy" (the sister's friend) is a dork and they should have used someone else. Josh is kind of cute, (lol) but he keeps acting stranger and stranger. It's like he's out grown them. This is one of the best air bud movies, but it has a few flaws. However, i recommend it

After showing off his basketball and football skills, Bud the dog is recruited to join his city's local football team. Meanwhile, he meets Molly, a golden retriever from England, with whom he ends up having five puppies, targets for new "dangerous" bandits. First film in the "Bud" series released directly to video.

The movie is no longer such wonders for children, as Bud 2 was not, and they still put an initiative rating to 10+, aff, if the little ones can't watch it, who will? Now Bud has a little crush, and Josh too, without any charm, it was no wonder that it was released directly to the video, and there are still some franchise films ahead of him... Never give up, discouraged, yes...

This movie is good, but disappointingly is nowhere near as good as the first airbud. The storyline is predictable and cheesey and you don't even see much of Josh Framm's legs! The hot teenage Kevin Zegers is the best thing in this movie.

Michael (aged 17)