Not as good as the first

“The Mighty Ducks” was built for crowd-pleasing the family audience, inspiring hockey fans and young kids into becoming hockey fans. I also can’t say that I didn’t get swayed into becoming a big fan of NHL Ducks, a hockey team spawned from the first film. I say this all to say that it’s kind of a buzzkill realizing there was only one really good movie in the series. “D2” is innocuous fun, but stretching this out does it few favors.

Incorporating the Ducks as the next Team USA is a nice idea. Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) returns to Minnesota after a knee injury only to find himself coaching his old team, now representing Team USA, in the Junior Goodwill Games. His big-bad opponent in those games is Iceland, but here he also has to deal with the dangers of falling into the distractions of corporate sponsorship throwing a lot of money at him.

All the Duck favorites return here, from Charlie (Josh Jackson), goalie Goldberg (Shaun Weiss), and Averman (Matt Doherty). But they now find themselves sharing time with new recruits- a Cuban player (Mike Vitar) who can’t stop, a Texan (Ty O’Neal), a girl goalie (Colombe Jacobsen), a Korean figure skater (Justin Wong), a heavy metal goon (Aaron Lohr) who eventually makes up one half of the Bash Brothers along with Fulton (Elden Henson), and Keenan Thompson plays an L.A. street kid.

Much of the characterizations again come down to stereotyping, which makes the first movie all the better for how it actually did manage to create a charismatic group of kids. That comraderie is still there and it’s easy to still feel psyched up by this team but I can’t say the new people added much. The Texan, who’s never without his lasso, is just a ridiculous caricature and the roid-head goon is only good in small doses.

Estevez is still the juice here though and it’s heartening that he manages to remain sincere and charismatic all while the script gives him nothing to do but recreate a lot of the motions of the first film. Another big problem is the villains, the coach made into a slick, snarling asshole who looks like he belongs in a Steven Seagal movie. The first movie had a good lesson in what mentors to trust and which to not, here it’s amazing how it turns an entire country into honorless thugs.

There is some decent hockey action and the movie brings back the old favorite, the Flying V, but it’s easy to see this movie knows less about hockey than it does about sports movie cliches. Its morality feels particularly hollow as it seems to love the idea of dirty playing at times but gets on a soapbox about it in others. The Bash Brothers, particularly celebrated here, make up most of the garbage that comes with the game.

“D2’s” railing against corporate sponsorship also is a bit of a laugh, especially when it seems like one of Disney’s notes here was to make sure the team drops the Team USA jerseys for new Duck ones just in time for Disney to sell them. In that, the film is particularly disingenuous. But there are some nice cameos in this one, and a few funny moments as the Ducks take Los Angeles. It maintains some of the first’s cuteness, but as a continuation it leaves much to be desired.