User reviews

I would have never guessed. This movie might not be as bad as #3, but it's certainly getting there. Though the acting might be a little better in this movie...really, who wants to see another Air Bud? The magical thought that all of Air Bud's puppies can also play sports is just laughable. Although baseball is a great sport, it's a little strange (and totally fake) that a dog can really hold a metal baseball bat and not break all its teeth hitting the ball. Well, that's pretty much all I have to say...hmmm...I'll give it a 4 out of 10.

I think it would have been better if they made 3 more movies before this one, that way the 7th Air Bud movie would have had the word seven in it.

I give it 4 stars because it's only the 4th movie not the seven and that feels false advertising.

These movies are great for little kids, but I think that they should've stopped after the first one because the ORIGINAL Air Bud passed away of cancer in the leg after the first movie came out. I am surprised that they actually had a sequel, let alone a 3rd one. I like the dog, but c'mon. They're showing things that are impossible. Kids watch these movies. What does this teach them? I know somebody who was like 7 when the movie came out. He threw a basketball on the top of his dog's head and it hurt his dog. In honor of the REAL Air Bud, they should've stopped after making the first one.

First off, it's about a dog that plays baseball. If this were set in the future, with maybe some ogres and robot men having a war against a giant Abraham Lincoln wearing a diaper, it would have been entertaining. In its current state, I hardly see how this could entertain its target audience, anybody younger than 6 years old. I watched it with my girlfriend's dad when we were both hungover and our headaches got worse!! This was atrocious, and the actors should be ashamed for having stooped so low as to dignify this movie's creation and release. THE DOG HITS A HOMERUN WITH A BASEBALL BAT IT HOLDS IN ITS MOUTH. ENOUGH SAID.

Baaaattterr uppppp!!! Or should I say, baaaaatttterrrr PUPPPP!!!!!! I can honestly now see why God created this earth!! To see the movie Air Bud 4 come to fruition! This movie made Air Bud look like CHUD...and I looooved CHUD! The addition of Rocky the Raccoon really tied things together for me; cause honestly I was completely lost after Air Bud: World Pup. The only thing that could top Air Bud as a soccer player? Of course! A baseball player! This movie absolutely needed to be made! Richard Karn's reprisal of "Patrick" made me jump out of my seat and "beg" for more! My God, please movie industry, keep turning out cinematic gems such as this because I am eating this crap up like a fecal-pheliac!

With Josh off to college, Bud, the sporty dog, will be in Andrea's care and rock like the star of a baseball team. But such success can arouse the envy of many, and, in the middle of the championship, their puppies are kidnapped. Josh is off to his first year of college and Buddy has stayed behind with Josh's little sister Andrea and the rest of the family. Andrea, attempting to fit in with her Jr. High classmates, she decides to join the baseball team and along the way discovers that Buddy is a talented baseball player.

Now focused on Andrea, not very good at sports, arts and the like, and missing her brother who leaves for college, but didn't save much, I'm glad the franchise is ending, hehehe, looking forward to the end, cute, but more the same in all of them, predictable cuteness, with cute little dramas, just...

Why the heck do people care so much if Buddy was only taught basketball? I mean seriously it doesn't matter! Maybe that's why you people think that the fourth movie was bad. I just watched it again and I still love it. Besides if you pay attention, the scientist guy says he wants to steal the super sports gene of Buddy's and his puppy's' and maybe that's how he learned the other sports. Use your imagination, jeez. After I saw the second and third and fourth movies for the first time, I had completely forgotten that the dude only taught Buddy basketball. Just enjoy the movie, don't pay attention to stuff like that because if you do it ruins the movie and you don't like it. If you just watch the movie but don't think about the others, it's enjoyable. In fact, my family enjoyed the first movie so much that we had gotten our first golden retriever, and a golden retriever puppy. Now, that retriever puppy is 4 years old and we have another puppy who just so happens to be a lab. All of this happened because of the Air Bud movies so that just goes to show how good this movie really is. Another reason as to why people didn't like the movie is probably because that's not their favorite genre of movies. People should stick to their favorite genre and comment on those movies not movies that they hate!!!

My one line summary is actually a quote from a 'Family Affair' web site, but it does reflect what made the biggest impression on me. Though Caitlin didn't show the talent she demonstrated, along with Tim Curry, in her TV series, she made Angela adorable and someone to care about. This, to me, was really a movie about a girl's adjustment to junior high, not a movie about a baseball-playing dog. The plot about the dog and his offspring--who a professor wanted to kidnap in order to create a 'superdog'--seemed secondary. Though the kidnap plot did add some excitement.

It was a funny and touching movie and good clean family fun. Well, not quite clean. Baseball players do get their uniforms dirty. Then there was that incident in Home Ec class. And let's not forget the hogs!

I'm 14 and think that Air Bud 4 is the best movie that has come out recently. I think Buddy and the Puppies are the cutest things! Not to mention that Kevin starring as Josh does a lot to bring up my vote! Not a lot of people think that a 14 year old would even consider sitting down to watch this movie, but me and my friends actually had an Air Bud party and watched all the movies back to back (commenting on how cute Kevin was the whole while). I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and HIGHLY recommend it, especially any teen age girls who want to see cute dogs and guys!

Let me get this straight - Air Bud 3 was worse than this? I've only seen 1, 2 and 4. Well I'll definately be giving 3 a miss.

I can't understand how anyone could say that there is little difference between the first Air Bud and this movie. The original was a good family film with good acting and production values, good pacing and tension - Ok, nothing out of the ordinary - not the Schindler's List of dog movies, but perfectly respectable for a lowish budget live action family film.

Air Bud 4 on the other hand, though it still has respectable production values, features indifferent acting at best, a plot that is really getting tired, some utterly stupid, ludicrous characters - particularly the villains - almost no decent sporting scenes involving Bud, and worst of all, really, really, REALLY bad pacing towards the end of the movie. The 'climax' is so limp it's embarressing. Let's just say that the means by which the bad guy's plot is foiled is so utterly devoid of dramatic tension that it defies belief. Then we get an ending which uses a stock plot device whch has been used to tremendous effect in plenty of movies - but here it's just boring. The timing, the pacing is all wrong. The movie has all the hallmarks of a production crew who just don't really care about what they're doing, and in a family movie, that's really a big mistake.

I have no problems with suspending disbelief. All the people who are harping on about how Buddy must be 13 now, and how can a dog do this and that - go watch a nature documentary if you want realism. This is a fantasy. It's problems aren't with the improbable story, they're with the insipid way it's told.

I'm going to rent the original again. I'm sure it will seem like a masterpiece after this.

Okay, the movie would have been funny if the dog bit the bad guy in the testicals, but instead this dog plays a third sport. Bo Jackson or Deion Sanders didn't play three sports and yet this mutt can. My advise is to save your $15 and go buy the HHH dvd.

Air Bud 4 is the latest in the series about the sports-playing dog, Buddy. This time around, though, it's a little bit different. Instead of teaming up with his regular pal, Josh Framm (played by Kevin Zegers), Buddy teams up with Josh's younger sister, Andrea (played by Caitlin Wachs).

Of all the Air Bud movies, I enjoyed this movie's plot the most. It focuses on Andrea and her many "problems": starting junior high school, her brother going away to college, her parents ignoring her in favor of the new baby, and her (at first) pathetic attempts at playing baseball. Unfortunately, Buddy is not as involved in the sports scenes as he was in the first three movies. He really doesn't even play until the near-end of the movie. This makes the pace of the movie a little slow at times. (It's also hard to accept that a dog can be a great baseball hitter.) Of course, being Disney, the movie is predictable and gives off warm fuzzies (which is not a bad thing). The subplot of the scientists is never really explored, which is a good thing; it would have ruined the movie. This is not a movie to rush out and rent/buy (unless you have a wife who loves Golden Retrievers, like mine), but it's a good film to watch when you have some time to spare. I recommend it for anyone who likes this series.

This is the first of the Air Bud movies that I've seen. I read the parental summaries of the other ones and it didn't sound like they were completely appropriate, but this one didn't, and so I gave it a shot.

I watched it with my 5 and 7 year old sons, and they both loved it. They found it very entertaining and cute the whole way through. I had to explain what was going on with the bad guys because that was a little over their heads, but they got it well enough. I appreciate that this is one of the very few movies that I've ever seen that actually earns its "G" rating.

Yeah, it's not the BEST movie for adults, but it's really not awful either. I had to hold in my laughter at some parts that were just too cheesy, but hey, the kids enjoyed it. The dogs were pretty and I enjoyed watching to see how they made it look like they did such amazing acts. There are a couple good lessons in there that you can talk to your kids about, as long as you're watching with them.

I highly recommend this for families, as we will definitely be watching it again at some point.

Air Bud was a good movie, if you don't mind bad acting, Air Bud two has gone far enough! The dog died after the first movie was made, and he was not even a golden retriever! The second one had worst acting in it too. Air Bud three was totally stupid, and a waste of time, and money.

I cannot believe they came out with an Air Bud 4! how in the heck can a dog hit a baseball with a bat!? How does the dog even know the rules of baseball, and the first owner in the first movie the "Clown" only taught him basketball! not all these other sports, and they had to just get Josh out of the picture somehow!

So that means the dog is at least 13 years old in this movie, if the first movie the younger sister was a baby, and now going into jr. high! Give me a break! Not even a toddler would like this!

The people of air bud has gone far enough, and now they are probably going to go out with more, to do ALL the sports.

All in all, don't waste you money, nor your time watching this movie!

Why everyone hate this film series?

By the fourth Air Bud outing, you pretty much know what you're signing up for: a sweet-natured, small-town family story where a golden retriever with preposterous athletic range helps a kid through growing pains while some cartoonish bad guys try to mess it all up. Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch (2002) sticks closely to that winning template, this time swapping the basketball court and the gridiron for the baseball diamond. It's gentle, predictable, and clearly made for kids, but it also has a surprisingly tidy emotional through-line: what happens when the original kid is ready to move on, and the dog has to help the younger sibling step into the spotlight? That little bit of "passing the torch" is what keeps this installment from being just "Air Bud but in cleats."

The film opens with a big status change: Josh Framm (Kevin Zegers) heads off to college, which is a nice acknowledgement that time has actually moved forward in the Air Bud universe. That leaves his younger sister Andrea in charge of Buddy, and it's Andrea who becomes the central human character this time. She joins the school baseball team, only to discover, to her delight and our total lack of surprise, that Buddy can field, catch, and generally play ball with super-canine skill. Just as the team starts to benefit from Buddy's talents, a second plot kicks in: Buddy's puppies are kidnapped-yes, really-by Rocky the Raccoon, a comic-adversary setup that gives the movie its bit of caper energy and a reason for Buddy to be briefly separated from the family. So on one side we've got Andrea trying to win games, make her mark, and live up to the Framm sporting legacy; on the other, we've got the recurring Air Bud idea that special dogs will always attract people (or in this case, critters and cronies) who want to exploit them. It's all very lightweight, but it moves quickly enough that kids are never far from either baseball or puppies.

Andrea is a solid protagonist for this world. She's earnest, she wants to prove herself, and she's not a brat about being left behind while her big brother goes off to college. That makes her a good audience stand-in for younger siblings watching their older ones grow up. Buddy, as ever, is the glue-he bridges Josh's era and Andrea's era, he provides the team with its edge, and he becomes the emotional focus when the puppies are taken. Returning adults (Cynthia Stevenson as Jackie, and Richard Karn continuing Patrick Sullivan from the previous film) keep that cozy, stable-family feeling this series leans on. Because Josh has been such a big presence in previous movies, his early exit actually helps dramatize the theme: life changes, but Buddy is still there, and the love in the house is still there.

Theme-wise, the film is clearer than you might expect from a straight-to-video dog-sports sequel. First, it's about transition and succession. Josh moving on means Andrea gets to grow, Buddy gets to prove he's not just "Josh's dog," and the family expands its idea of who can be the hero. Second, it continues the series' kindness vs. Exploitation thread. Buddy thrives because he's treated as family; the antagonists want to capture/market him and his puppies. For kids, that's an easy moral line to read: care for animals, don't use them. Third, there's a community joy theme-once Buddy starts helping the team, the school perks up, games matter, the town rallies. All the Air Bud films have that small-town fantasy where one remarkable dog can lift everyone's mood, and this one keeps it alive. Finally, there's a faint responsibility motif: Andrea is looking after Buddy while Josh is gone; Buddy, in turn, must look after his pups. Everybody's growing up a little.

The cinematography, as with the previous entries, is practical and kid-first. Baseball is actually an easier sport than basketball for showcasing a dog: the field is open, the action is more lateral, and there's space to show Buddy chasing, leaping, or blocking the ball. The movie mostly uses wider, static shots during plays so younger viewers can see the whole gag play out-no hyper-cutting that would hide the trick. Close-ups are reserved for reaction shots from Andrea, teammates, or the adults on the sideline to tell us, "yes, that was amazing." Lighting is bright, outdoorsy, and TV-friendly-greens of the diamond, blue skies, warm interiors at home-keeping everything inside that safe, cheery tone that defines the franchise. There's no attempt at visual reinvention here, but the choices make sense: the star is a golden retriever doing baseball, so the camera's job is to let us see him do it.

When you evaluate the film's strengths, a few stand out. The biggest is premise delivery: it says "Buddy plays baseball," and it gives you repeated, readable baseball sequences with the dog genuinely in the middle of the action. It also refreshes the human lead in a sensible way-Andrea is younger, but not too young, and her taking over from Josh keeps the series from feeling frozen in time. The tone is consistently gentle, perfect for its audience: no real menace, no mean-spirited jokes, and problems that can be solved with teamwork and love. The puppy subplot is an easy win for younger kids, and it dovetails nicely with the film's "family can get bigger" message. And finally, the movie maintains continuity with the previous films, which fans of the series will appreciate.

But the weaknesses are just as clear. By part four, predictability is unavoidable: dog helps kid, bad guys try to take dog or pups, big game decides everything, family reaffirms bond. There are no surprises for older viewers. The villain angle-the raccoon and the kidnapping plot-leans into broad, almost cartoon slapstick, which will work for very young viewers but may feel like filler to anyone else. Because the movie has to juggle Andrea's sports journey, Buddy's heroics, and the puppy rescue, none of those threads gets deep exploration; the emotional beats, especially Andrea coping with Josh's absence, are handled quickly. Visually, it's serviceable but flat-you won't remember individual shots the way you might remember the "prove-it" shots from the original Air Bud. And the central magic trick-"the dog can play this sport too!"-is inevitably less jaw-dropping the fourth time around, which means the movie leans on cuteness more than genuine wow factor.

Conclusion: Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch is exactly the kind of sequel you make when you know your core audience is kids who just want to spend more time with a golden retriever who can outplay them. It's warm, wholesome, and earnest about growing up, it finds a believable way to pass the story from Josh to Andrea, and it wraps everything in baseball sunshine and puppy antics. What it doesn't do is surprise, deepen, or visually elevate the franchise-but it was never really built to do that. Judged on its own terms, as a family movie that keeps the Buddy myth alive while nudging the human story forward, it does its job, and for fans who've followed this sports-loving dog from court to field to diamond, that will be more than enough.