My weekend plans were interrupted by cruddy weather in Grand Rapids, meaning I spent entirely too much of my weekend shut in to my hotel room watching Disney Plus. Ergo, we’re looking at the Mighty Ducks animated series this week!
What’s The Plot?
Six ragtag rebels from Puckworld, an advanced alien society of humanoid ducks, expel the brutal Saurian aliens occupying their planet. In doing so, they are accidentally exiled to another dimension – ours! Landing in the city of Anaheim California, the six resolve to protect humanity from the Saurians while showing off their skill at their homeworld’s primary pastime, philosophy, and military training exercise: HOCKEY!
Who Made This Beautiful Garbage?
Imagine for a moment that you’re one of the largest entertainment companies on the planet Earth and you have a successful live action film franchise about a team of underdog kid hockey players. You’ve even extended the name to an NHL franchise you own. How do you capitalize on that for children’s television? If you answered “a toyetic action cartoon about a team of alien superhero ducks whose day job is being the professional hockey team The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, lead by an actionized version of the real team’s mascot“, you’ve clearly taken the same drugs the people at Disney did in 1996.
Five Reasons to See It
- The team utilizes exploding hockey pucks as their weapon of choice. It seems like there would be easier projectiles to use as ammunition, but I’m not a duck from another dimension.
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There is no explanation to why the religion/sport/martial tradition of an other-dimensional planet of humanoid ducks is a one-to-one match for the human sport of hockey, which is arguably the least popular of humanity’s major sports. Not that there would ever be an adequate explanation but they could have at least tried.
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The lead villain, Lord Dragaunus, is voiced by Tim Curry. His three somewhat bumbling henchmen (Siege, Chameleon, & Wraith) are voiced by Clancy Brown, Frank Welker, & Tony Jay (respectively) . If you need bad guys for your unspeakably weird action cartoon, you may as well get the best.
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Jim Belushi voices the teams sleazy human manager, because the typecasting started early with Jim. In literally the second aired episode, he’s just as attracted to a traitorous lady duck spy as the men of his hockey team. That your primary human character would be DTF a humanoid duck is a bold move for the second episode.
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The show it’s it’s humor peak in the first few minutes of the first episode: angry cop reads a headline about six “mystery ducks” foiling a crime as he walks into The Pond, which is hosting a televised professional hockey game where the home team is made up of six humanoid duck people. “Mystery Ducks”. Right.
Recommendation
The show has a surprisingly good sense of humor, its writing staff seeming to be acutely aware of how ridiculous the premise was. Overall, it’s just a middle of the road 90s action cartoon…but for some people, that’ll push the right “comforting childhood familiarity” buttons.
