Plot: Set in present-day Minnesota, the Mighty Ducks have evolved from scrappy underdogs to an ultra-competitive, powerhouse youth hockey team. After 12-year-old Evan Morrow is unceremoniously cut from the Ducks, he and his mom, Alex, set out to build their own team of misfits to challenge the cutthroat, win-at-all-costs culture of youth sports today. With the help of Gordon Bombay, they rediscover the joys of playing just for the love of the game.
Review: The Mighty Ducks holds a special place in my childhood. The combination of underdog sports energy and a sense of humor, The Mighty Ducks is a movie I still quote to this day. While the child cast led by Joshua Jackson remain one of the most memorable from that era (second only to the kids from The Sandlot), The Mighty Ducks was truly Emilio Estevez's movie. Playing a character desperately in need of redemption, Estevez was the anchor that carried all three of the films in the Disney trilogy. Now, fifteen years after the last feature film, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers aims to ignite the same underdog spirit as the movies. Unfortunately, it never lives up to the bar set by the movies even with Estevez returning as Gordon Bombay.
Taking a cue from the hit Karate Kid revival, Cobra Kai, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers follows the original series narratively. Where Cobra Kai took the villainous dojo and turned them into anti-heroes, Game Changers takes the scrappy Mighty Ducks and turns them into the antagonists. Like the Hawks from the 1992 film, The Mighty Ducks on this series are the popular, beloved, and profitable team that dominates junior hockey in Minnesota. A relatively risky move for Disney, this series makes you dislike the Ducks from the outset as young Evan and his mom Alex form their new team. Yes, the new team is just as awful as the District 5 squad when Gordon Bombay found them but the series spends a lot more time on how Alex and Evan scramble to put their new group together.
On the casting side, the young actors all match their on-screen characters in age, and yet they seem so much younger than the original cast did back in 1992. Maybe that is a product of my age now, but these kids seem much younger. Led by Brady Noom, best known for playing Tommy Darmody on HBO's Boardwalk Empire and as Thor in the raunchy comedy Good Boys, the kids here all hit the same broad characterizations you would expect: the video gamer, the weird girl, the trendy girl, the nerdy kid, the daredevil, the good-looking doofus, and the leader. The kids all have some solid chemistry on screen, but the dialogue often feels cliche and lacks some of the snap that made the movies so much wittier. What is definitely apparent here is how different kids are in a Generation Z setting as compared to the Millennial/Gen X world of the original movies.
On the adult side, far more screen time is given to Lauren Graham over Emilio Estevez. Yes, Gordon Bombay is a significant presence through the three episodes made available for this review and will likely appear as much through the rest of the series, but this is definitely a project focused on Graham as Alex Marrow. A single mother working as a paralegal and scrambling to support her son's hockey dreams, Graham brings the same frantic energy that made her so popular on the series Gilmore Girls and Parenthood. Graham has mastered playing different types of mothers and this is no exception. She cares, she makes mistakes, and she clearly knows nothing about hockey. Her desire to do whatever she can for Evan lends some nice emotional stakes to this series. Unfortunately, that is often ruined by overly cheesy moments that feel cobbled from every family sitcom of the last twenty years.
As for Emilio Estevez, his portrayal of Gordon Bombay has transformed from a brash attorney learning to care about kids to a professional hockey player and college coach. In Game Changers, Bombay has transformed once again into an embittered former coach and player who once again hates kids and hates hockey. For reasons that become apparent, his fall from grace works well as a support for the other transformations on this series as the new underdog team grows into the legacy of what the original Mighty Ducks squad represented. Estevez looks every bit his age and resembles his father, Martin Sheen, more than ever. While I did not get to see the episode featuring many of the stars of the original The Mighty Ducks reprising their roles, if they are handled as well as Bombay, I am intrigued to see those episodes.
The Mighty Ducks Game Changers is a series that may appeal to middle school kids that fit into the target demographic for a show such as this. They might like the humor and some of the hockey action and may even relate to the core kids in each episode. Adults looking for some nostalgia after a couple of decades from the feature films will enjoy seeing Emilio Estevez back on screen but may struggle with how little focus there is, at least in these first episodes, to the feature films. I know that the series has its heart in the right place even if it doesn't always work in balancing the new narrative with an homage to the movie trilogy. With the episodes clocking in around the half-hour mark, you will likely breeze through this story and not feel the need to come back week after week. It may just be worth a binge once the whole season has aired on Disney+.
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers premieres March 26th on Disney+.