Soccer Dog: The Movie

A blatant rip-off of "Air Bud", this movie is REALLY about parents worrying too much about parenting. All the foibles of the characters (eg; adult coaches who dont know the game) are taken to the extreme- so much so that they are totally unbelievable, not funny.

There is no semblance of reality here, folks and you'll not develop sympathy for ANY of the characters.

The best thing about the movie is the good looking kits (uniforms) of the opposing team in the first game the dog plays. Perhaps chosen because the setting is supposedly near Arlington Heights, IL, the home of the Columbus Crew's franchise player, Brian McBride.

This stinker is in mystifyingly frequent rotation on one channel here, and I've found myself watching in horror again and again. The script is like something one would come up with friends over several too many drinks, and the production values match admirably.

It's meant to be a children's movie, but features a grotesque (and poorly explained) kidnapping scene; the star dog has a lack of star quality equaled only by the other actors; and it in general has the look of being filmed in someone's backyard (the climactic soccer game features no more than three dozen extras sadly cheering in the background).

It even all wraps up with a budget-ran-out voice-over sequence when the story, to one's relief, simply stops. The high-raters here must be either the producers - or the majority of the extras from the soccer game!

I have to say that I found this movie utterly bizarre, I don't know what I was expecting but so much of this movie is just unforgivable, largely down to the script. The film's tone is all over the place, it's packed with lazy cliches and stereotypes, at times the movie is confusing, at other times it's just pure nonsense. The main father character is just not interesting, nor is it any fun watching him at his work. The jokes are badly delivered and the plot is just impossible to follow as we have little to no idea what it's about. I really was baffled by this. The narration is also a sign that the film is struggling to tell its story visually.

Soccer Dog makes me think of the wonderfully wacky books by Gordon Korman I enjoy so much. Unique characters add a deliciously surreal tinge to the film. Very satisfying villains; one's the sort you love to hate and the other is one of those freaky-creepy types that unsettle you in an entertaining manner. It's well-conceived and just generally fun to watch. The dog, "Lincoln," is the sort of doggy main character we all love and expect from cinema: charming, endearing, and with that head-tilt thing down pat. A must-see if you love dogs, or if you get the warm tinglies from watching a good family film.

OK... yes, it's a movie about a dog playing soccer. Yes, its attempts at portraying a very evil dog catcher fall flatter than every opposing soccer player seems to when the dog comes their way. And yes, most of its attempts at humor fail.

However, if you go out and rent a movie like this or watch it on TV expecting a masterpiece, what universe are you living in? Has any movie about animals playing sports ever really been that great? Apologies to all of the Air Bud fans out there, but even that movie wasn't all that great, and it's the Godfather of animal athlete movies. So, if you're holding Soccer Dog up to the standards set by other movies like it, you will find that it is actually fairly decent.

A man named Alden, once an orphan, is now happily married and living in a soccer-crazed town called Crocker. However, since he was once an orphan, he feels that it is his duty to adopt from the same orphanage. In comes Clay, the shy, chronically depressed young boy they adopt. This movie spends a little too much time being melodramatic with the attempt at chronicling the difficulties of parenting, but oh well. Clay joins the soccer team at his father's request, becoming the laughing stock of his team and the opposing team for his ignorance of the game they hold sacred. Just when all hope seems lost for Clay to fit in, he finds a dog. What happens? Lincoln happens to score a goal during a game and quickly becomes the town's biggest sensation since the sport of soccer was invented.

My favorite character in this whole movie would have to be the coach. I think he may save some of the movie with his "stand-out" humor, meaning he is the only one who is truly funny. Fans of old Nickelodeon TV shows may also recognize the referee as the head counselor from "Salute Your Shorts", making it even more enjoyable. And no movie is complete without a David Hasselhoff joke, and even Soccer Dog pulls that off.

All in all, not a bad attempt at a genre that never should have happened in the first place. 7/10