Soccer Dog

Loving couple adopt an orphan from a local orphanage. Alden tries to bond with his son by getting him involved in a local soccer team. However the team is poorly coached and can't win any games. When Clay's dog turns out to be a natural player he is put in the first team (at the expense of Clay) causing rifts in the team. With the team on a great cup run and the town gone Lincoln mad everything seems fine. However Clay feels neglected and a dog catcher seeks to catch Lincoln who have previously escaped him.

It's not a great premise at all, but with enough tongue in cheek humour this could have been pretty funny. The story is rubbish and the core of it is dull. The main bit relates to tension between Clay and his dad, and a rivalry between Clay and another team. Both these bits are dull and nothing new. However what is enjoyable is the occasional streak of adult jokes that come up.

The film's comedy come from the characters that represent various films. We have the mobster type father (just like Paulie from Goodfellas), we have the coach of one of the teams who rips off the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket, we have one of the players who talks like Vince Vaughn in Swingers – and we have a familiar face from Blazing Saddles and a referee who looks like Tony Blair! We also have a few scenes that spoof other films – the best being Ransom – but most of it isn't very good.

Foley is OK as Clay but Marshall is dull as the dad. McMurray is funny as the coach and the various film spoof characters are pretty funny. However the main characters are dull and Billy Drago has nothing to do and doesn't carry much menace. The scenes of the dog playing football are daft too, and not well done – the dog either follows a ball that is obviously being dragged in front of it or they use an absurd computer generated ball instead.

Overall this has plenty of funny characters but the core is really dull making this worth watching once, but don't expect it to be that good.

This near-masterpiece contains some of the most intense football-scenes ever filmed. Backed up by some bone-breaking cinematography, the skills displayed by the actors, and certainly the dog itself, are right up there with the stuff Stallone gave us in "Victory" (1981). There are some pretty hard shots in this movie, if you take my meaning.

The humour... Well, it's lovely. I'll admit that the razor-sharp dialogue caught me off-guard at a couple of occasions, and that's what this movie is all about: Cutting the edge on as many levels as possible.

"He's fast, and he can score goals."

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.

SOCCER DOG: THE MOVIE provides fun, diverting viewing for kids, while sneaking in some sly comedy for their parents. Sure, it's a low-budget AIR BUD for the foreign market, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. I feel a little sorry for the viewer who expected "research"-- a little sorry, but not much more. As for the viewer complaining that all the adult characters were "baffoons," perhaps he meant to say "baboons" or "buffoons." Stars Marshall and D'Abo give credible performances. And while many of the supporting adult characters are indeed broadly-drawn, they do their jobs and get some laughs. And the kid and his dog are very effective. I watched SOCCER DOG with my young niece. She loved it, and she's watched it since. The movie entertained her

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.