Product: The Mighty Ducks (1992)
Rating: 4.0
Family-Friendly Hockey Fun
If you're looking for a good hockey movie that the kids can actually watch, this Disney vehicle starring Emilio Estevez is actually pretty decent. Estevez plays hotshot Minnesota lawyer and former youth hockey star Gordon Bombay, who gets popped for DUI and sentenced to community service. His assignment: Coach a hapless youth hockey team made up of misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. It's been called "The Bad News Bears on skates," but The Mighty Ducks is a little too saccharine for the comparison. If you can get past that (and all the shameless tie-ins to the NHL franchise Disney once owned) there's some good hockey action and positive messages about sportsmanship, teamwork, believing in yourself and coming to grips with past mistakes. Especially in the final scenes, when the unheralded Ducks play for the league championship against their arch-rivals, the Hawks, a team led by Bombay's ruthless former coach. (Avoid the movie's two sequels, which don't measure up.)