D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994) - Does it hold up?
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Characters from the movie huddle together during a game
I am so glad I didn’t give up on my original plan to watch and write about this movie after watching
The Mighty Ducks. It’s almost as if the creative team traveled 30 years into the future to read my thoughts about the original, then went back in time and tried to fix everything for the sequel.
Whereas the first one had way-too-long pranks involving dog poop and obviously sped-up film of a chase sequence, this film gives us the classic “Shaving cream in hand, feather to tickle the nose” gag. Even better, it’s presented in three acts as part of a team-building montage instead of being entirely unrelated to the rest of the film. We also got the incredibly bizarre second period in the final match where everyone acted out due to frustration and renewed desire to have fun. Then we got Coach Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) reminding them that what they were doing wasn’t a good way to win a hockey game. It was the best of both worlds in that we got some wacky shenanigans and an acknowledgment that the time and place they chose for the wacky shenanigans was a pretty dumb way to play hockey.