The Mighty Ducks

This used to be one of my all-time favorite movies as a child!  I had a huge crush on Joshua Jackson (Charlie) back then and I LOVED hockey!  There were a lot of hockey/figure skating movies that came out during my childhood and with the winter Olympics here, it reminds me of how I used to religiously watch all the time.  It was great to receive this great trip down memory lane on this snowy day.  Unfortunately this movie was a bit old for Liam and although I tried to watch it with him a couple of times, it kept getting ejected for things like Rugrats, Curious George, and Rio.  In his defense it is about Pee-Wee Hockey and a little above a 3 year old's head.

In case you missed sharing the Mighty Ducks at the height of it's fame in 1992 when it was released by Walt Disney Studios, let me tell you a bit about it.  It is an American sports comedy film directed by Stephen Herek (101 Dalmations).  It stars Emilio Estevez as a former pee-wee hockey star turned lawyer, who finds himself forced to coach for community service.  The team he is given consists of a cluster of a group of kids that have not yet learned how to work together.  The team includes younger versions of stars who made it big later in life, most notably Charlie who is played by Joshua Jackson.

The Mighty Ducks grossed over $50 million, making it a surprising success with audiences and spawning the beginning of a trilogy and also a spin-off tv show.  Critically this movie was a bomb, but the audiences loved it causing it to continue on into the trilogy with D2 & D3 coming out every 2 years respectively (1994, 1996).  The movie went on to inspire a real-life hockey team owned by Disney to be named after it in 1993, which when sold by Disney was renamed the Anaheim Ducks.






Stars you can find in the movie:
Gordon Bombay (the coach) played by Emilio Estevez (The Breakfast Club, Young Guns, St Elmo's Fire, The Outsiders, Bobby, etc)
Hans (Gordon's mentor) played by Joss Ackland (Kid in King Arthur's Court, Hunt For Red October)
Coach Jack Riley played by Lane Smith (Lois & Clark the New Adventures of Superman)
Charlie Conway played by Joshua Jackson (Dawson's Creek, The Skulls, Fringe)
Fulton Reed played by Elden Henson*aka Ratliff* (Butterfly Effect, Deja Vu, Lords of Dogtown)
Dave Karp played by Aaron Schwartz (Gossip Girl)
Connie Moreau played by Marguerite Moreau (Grey's Anatomy, Shameless, Parenthood)

The overall movie is about an underdog team!  And I loved it as a child!  Watching it as an adult was still great!  I give it a 4 out of 5 stars.  I do remember that the story gets better and will haev to revisit the rest of the trilogy as there were some holes in this script, and it had a rocky started but it pulled through and ended strong.  I definitely recommend watching it.   I would think kids age 10 and up would definitely be a great audience for it, and even younger if you child is into Hockey!  Also revisit the young Joshua Jackson and what really put him on the map!





Unfortunately there is no really good trailer that I can find so you can check out both of these videos to get an idea of whether or not you would be interested in this movie:

Here is the Disney Wiki Page *Caution it does contain spoilers: The_Mighty_Ducks