# Air Bud: Golden Receiver (1998)

### reviewed by
Scott Renshaw

    AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER
    (Dimension)
    Starring:  Kevin Zegers, Gregory Harrison, Cynthia Stevenson, Robert
    Costanzo, Nora Dunn, Perry Anzilotti.
    Screenplay:  Paul Tamasy and Aaron Mendelsohn.
    Producer:  Robert Vince.
    Director:  Richard Martin.
    MPAA Rating:  PG (mild comic violence)
    Running Time:  90 minutes.
    Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

Quite a few things have changed since last we visited with Buddy, the hoops-shooting golden retriever star of AIR BUD. His human pal, Josh Framm (Kevin Zegers) is starting junior high school; Josh's widowed mother (Cynthia Stevenson, taking over from Wendy Makkena) is re-entering the dating arena. Even the name before the film has changed, with Disney shuttling the sequel from its flagship banner to Dimension, the genre division of Miramax (apparently realizing the original had too few fart jokes to qualify as a live-action Disney film). And of course, the most significant and tragic change involved the death of the original Buddy from cancer, though he was only one of several dogs to perform in AIR BUD.

I only wish that with all those changes they could have rustled up a new screenwriting team. Paul Tamasy and Aaron Mendelsohn return to duty for AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER, this time turning Buddy into a football star when Josh goes out for the local hapless youth football team led by good-natured, multiple-bypass-waiting-to-happen Coach Fanelli (Robert Costanzo). Naturally this leads to amusing sequences of Buddy befuddling opposing defenses as he makes like Jerry Rice. But wait, there's more! You also get touching dramatic sub-text as Josh struggles to accept his mom's new relationship with a kindly veterinarian (Gregory Harrison). All that, plus a bumbling pair of Russians (Nora Dunn and Perry Anzilotti) who want to kidnap Buddy to join their trained animal circus.

The original AIR BUD had good intentions and solid family values to spare, but it tied them up in such derivative and unfocused package that even the kids in the audience couldn't keep their attention on the precocious pooch. New director Richard Martin picks up the pace considerably this time around, but he can't do much to create any cohesiveness with this story. From moment to moment, it's hard to tell whether AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER is supposed to be an Afterschool Special, a John Hughes film or an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle (though with considerably less wit). Martin even throws in some low-rent vaudeville by pairing his own dad Dick (of Rowan & Martin fame) with Tim Conway as goofy play-by-play announcers. It's hard to take the messages about believing in yourself and loving a new parent seriously when they're juxtaposed with two clowns sliding around in the contents of a tank conveniently labeled "Fish Guts."

It's also hard to take seriously a film where a premise so bizarre is shrugged off as a given. To the credit of the original AIR BUD, at least it showed people fumbling with the basketball rule book to figure out whether a dog was eligible for the team. This time around, Buddy trots onto the field in his leather helmet and shoulder pads as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps somewhere on the cutting room floor is a scene in which an arbitrator cites the "Air Bud" precedent. Without such a scene, everything that follows seems a little insulting to the intelligence, and an indication of how lazy the screenwriters were that they couldn't come up with some creative way to land Buddy on the team. Isn't it about time for a satiric poke at school "inclusiveness" rules?

I'm not pretending that AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER was made with me in mind. This one is a short attention span kiddie-caper which did have the young ones clapping and guffawing with some regularity, and perhaps that counts for something. It even features a few decent throwaway gags, including a llama named Dolly and a splendidly off-key rendition of the American National Anthem. There's just something vaguely desperate about this whole AIR BUD franchise -- they have build not just one film but a series of them on what amounts to a better-than-average Stupid Pet Trick. Sure, it's harmless enough, but the frantic amalgamation of disparate elements gave me a headache. It's a bit frightening to note that the original Buddy's trainer Kevin DiCicco is putting together another project, AIR BUD: THE NEXT GENERATION. Perhaps in the course of teaching a new dog a new trick, he could teach a new screenwriting team one I'd really love to see: how to write a script that might appeal to someone over the age of five.

         On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Buds no wiser:  4.

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