The Mighty Ducks

I suppose I should come right out and admit that I'm more than a little biased in my treatment of certain nostalgic material. Objectivity is a nice idea, but let's be real here: anyone growing up in Minnesota in the 1990s who even knew a person who played hockey was predisposed to fall in love with The Mighty Ducks. As a proud ex-Minneapolitan, I not only loved the movie for its hometown roots but also because my family drove daily past the arenas where the movie was filmed and if I squinted hard enough I can even see some former Pee Wee Hockey League-affiliated friends as cheering crowd extras. It wasn't exactly a tough sell for me.

Regardless of my personal inclination to adore this movie unapologetically, I still assumed that loving this movie was nothing short of a universal kid phenomenon. It had heart, stellar sports movie cliches, quacking, and even a scrappy female player who later went to star in one of my favorite movies*. Maybe I just love hockey enough to be blinded by the subject matter, but I was reasonably certain that this film was beloved by all. Call me naive, but I was shocked to learn that the film hold an 8% positive rating on aggregate movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. I know kids movies can be a little cheesy, but eight percent? Has my entire movie-loving life been a lie? I don't know what to believe anymore.

Maybe the real issue is that these adults just are so darn critical. Yes, as a currently critical adult I realize this likely veers me into hypocritical territory, but as a child I pretty much took everything released on TV or VHS as media gospel until I caught a few episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and realized these things were mockable. The Mighty Ducks, though, lived in a time before over-analyzing and before my friends and I held discerning opinions on quality of entertainment sources. We loved hockey, we loved a young Joshua Jackson, and dammit we loved ourselves some Mighty Ducks and that was that.

The original did seem to have a bit of that magic dust glow haloing its premise, at least to children. Yes, it's a hackneyed and oft repeated tale of a group of ragtag kids who just can't catch a break who finally find the inspiring hope they so desperately crave in the hands of a rough-round-the-edges coach. That description could fit a hundred kids sports movies, but it doesn't detract all that much from their heartwarmingness and general adorability. We may see now that these themes were perhaps not the most original, but they did continually reaffirm our beliefs that even if we were completely terrible at something, some kindly adult might come along and change our lives into those of winners.

On the other side of the fence, I imagine all of my sport coaches throughout the year rewound these inspirational locker room moments again and again, seeking cheesy motivational fodder. Who can argue with that level of cinematic results? If only we could have mustered up the corresponding heartening theme music. Then it would have been in the bag.



The familiar rehashed story focuses on Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez), the most bad-assed named attorney in the Minneapolis area facing drunk driving charges. See, we even start with a message. Don't drink and drive, kids, or you'll have to live out your unfulfilled dreams of leading a group of peewee hockey misfits to a much-deserved victory. Bombay is predictably sentenced to community service coaching a kid's hockey league, forcing him to revisit his own traumatic childhood hockey memories in which he blew the big game for his team. Scarring stuff.

Of course, Bombay is further dismayed to find himself saddled with an untalented motley crew of hockey misfits. There's not a shred of mutual respect between the players and their new coach, with the two sides getting off to an abysmal start. There's a clear hatred brewing between coach and team, and it doesn't look particularly pretty.



Many of Bombay's early coaching efforts are at best misguided, leading both the team and their parents to berate his coaching style and personal character alike. As is apt to happen in these types of Disney films, Bombay coincidentally is reunited with an old mentor, Hans, who seems to be in the right place at the right time at every turn to encourage the budding coach's past passion for the sport.

In typical lawyerly fashion, Bombay solicits funding from his boss, Mr. Ducksworth. Get it? Ducksworth, Ducks? I hope a screenwriter's guild award went to that guy. With financial backing, the team is able to acquire a lot of the equipment and practice space they so sorely needed, and it looks like we're heading in the right direction.




There are the requisite misunderstandings in which the team gets pretty angry over something they misoverheard Bombay say and most players choose to boycott a game, forcing a forfeit. To make things worse, Bombay is coming to the end of serving out his community service sentence only to find that Ducksworth and Co. all seem hell bent on manipulating the peewee hockey system in some sort of corrupt ploy that would never matter in real life. Ducksworth goes so far as to fire Bombay, which is of course the only logical next step in this ever-growing distance between the world of peewee hockey and reality.

Our kids are still scuffling over their mixed loyalties to each other versus the coach, ending in a quacking incident that lands them all in detention. Bombay comes to visit their detention classroom, offers some much-needed pep and encouragement, giving them a major boost of team pride.



The semi-corrupt league disputes over star player Adam (who should be zoned as a Ducks player but played for the anonymously evil rivals the Hawks) are resolved as Adam finally joins the Ducks, adding to their burgeoning confidence. The Ducks make the playoffs, win a couple more games, and all seems to be falling into place as expected in a rah-rah sports movie.

As expected, the Ducks face off against the Hawks in their championship game, setting the stage for a last minute not-so-surprising victory. Instead of chastising and berating the boys like his coach had, Bombay encourages them and they take the game per expected. It's still sweet though. All the while the romantic storyline between Bombay and a player's parent seems to be flourishing. On top of all this feel-goodness, the kids offer their encouragement for Bombay's own fledgling minor league hockey career, and while a tad over the top it still manages to warm your heart at least as much as a shot of good whiskey.

Just ignore that half of this clip is the closing credits. You're granted full permission to skip that part.

It may not be the perfect movie, but there's a reason some movie tropes are replayed time and time again. It isn't a new tale to adult moviegoers, but through the fresh virgin eyes of children it manages to renew itself as affective for a new generation. When we later saw the baseball, football, and basketball versions of this movie we were well prepared for the requisite shots of inspiration. Not to mention the two sequels, the animated series, and an actual NHL team under the Ducks namesake. Learning about sportsmanship and franchise milking management in one fell swoop. Not bad.


*Wet Hot American Summer, in case you were wondering, starring our pal Marguerite Moreau. If any of you caught the Wet Hot references in this post, congratulations. You're awesome.

10 Things I Hate About You

There's nothing like a movie based on a Shakespearean play to get the teenage hormones firing. Well, perhaps not in their original form, but take out all of those "thees" and "thous" and you've got yourself the basis of a juicy, teen-friendly blockbuster hit. The real key is to trick kids into thinking that what they're watching is in no way tied to anything remotely educational or character-building, and leave them to be midguidedly amused upon reading the original and finding that the main characters share names with some of their favorite teen movie roles.

In the 90s, Shakespeare was actually pretty standard cinema fare, though 10 Things I Hate About You was most apt at repackaging the original concept. There was Baz Luhrman's iconic Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream with Michelle Pfiffer and Calista Flockhart, reincarnations of both Hamlet and The Twelfth Night, and even the semi-autobiographical Shakespeare in Love featuring Gwenyth Paltrow. Someone out there must have seen the rise in Shakespeare's 90s cinema stock and thought to themselves, "Now how I can I make this appealing to teenagers who consistently fall asleep while reading their 10th-grade English class copies of Macbeth?"

Indeed, moviemakers were up to the challenge, releasing 10 Things I Hate About You in 1999, a clever rethinking of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. See how much it helps to change the name? I'm not a hundred percent certain I could even recognize a shrew in a forest ranger lineup of woodland creatures, and I can't imagine delighting in the fact that the term was meant to describe the lowly and second-rate social status of women. A squirrel maybe, but a shrew? Really? They're not even industrious or cuddly. How insulting.

Lucky for us the new teen version respun the tale to include a mild dose of feminist manifesto, thus canceling out the play's original message of female subordination to their obviously superior male counterparts. In short, we were given an upbeat and more enlightened retelling of the original Shakespeare tale, though at least the initial setup of the storyline remained relatively intact. Cast any film with good looking, well-dressed teenagers and we'll all quickly forget that it's somehow laced into the rich heritage of significant 26th century literary tradition.



Even from the trailer alone it's easy to see all of the wonderful 90s teen movie cliches that so defined this iconic genre. Teen comedies were all the range, though 10 Things proved to be a bit smarter than its peers. For instance, it refused to employ the cheap trick of giving our supposed outcast glasses, which is essentially the equivalent of having a character cough to indicate future terminal illness. Instead, 10 Things gives us a sassy, independent-thinking social deviant who is cool in her own right, even if she doesn't abide by the same rigid standards of mainstream high school coolness as her sister. For a teen movie, that's a pretty lofty feat.

It's true to its Shakespearean roots in its utterly complicated and twisted plot. We open on Cameron's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) first day of school as his nerdy escort Michael gives him the grand tour complete with requisite clique overview. In the midst of his orientation, Cameron spots the beautiful and popular Bianca (Larissa Oleynik, who I still generally refer to as Alex Mack for mental cataloging purposes) and is immediately taken in by her physical charms. Michael wisely tries to dissuade his delusional companion, but he's too far gone to be swayed by logic. Instead, he signs on as Bianca's French tutor, ignoring the fact that he himself does not speak French.



Meanwhile, Bianca is smitten with tube sock model and toolbox extraordinaire Joey (Andrew Keegan), who while admittedly a dreamboat in the looks department is less than brimming with sparkling wit and conversational skills. Unless the conversation is about him, of course. Bianca's joyride is outed by bitter sister Kat (Julia Stiles), forcing their single father to reconsider his ironclad anti-dating policy. The new policy turns out to be Bianca can date when Kat chooses to date, creating a sticky and notably uncomfortable situation for all. Strategic parenting at its finest.

Cameron starts on as Bianca's French tutor, during which time he learns about Bianca's newly enforced dating restriction. Cameron and Michael hatch a scheming plan to find a suitable suitor for surly sister Kat. He approaches Patrick (the late great Heath Ledger), an Aussie loner with a reputation for dangerous behavior. After failing to convince Patrick themselves, Cameron and Michael consider a new strategy and enlist the help of BMOC Joey Donner. They broker a deal for Joey to pay Patrick in exchange for his Kat-wooing services, unaware of his role as middleman to Cameron.

Michael, angry for being chastised by his former group of nerdy preps, starts a rumor that classmate and rival Bogey Lowenstein's intimate get-together for his pre-WASPy friends is actually a party brimming with free beer and live music. All the while Kat is underwhelmed (maybe just whelmed?) by Patrick's attempts at romance




The whole school shows up at the Lowenstein residence, including Bianca and Kat after the former begged the latter to attend. Kat gets outstandingly drunk, dances on a table, and incurs a near-concussion as a result. Patrick is at her side the whole way, seemingly charmed by his former burden. Cameron learns that Bianca was actually playing him rather than the other way around, as she was using him as a pawn in her path to Joeydom. However, Cameron offers Bianca a ride home and is granted a kiss in return, refocusing his intentions.

After sobering up, Kat remains unimpressed by Patrick's attempts until he performs the ultimate grand gesture that left teen girls everywhere swooning:



There are some minor hiccups but Patrick manages to convince Kat that his intentions are true, which is actually pretty false and he's receiving $300 for his services. Granted, he seems to be into her, but I can't imagine I'd be pleased to find someone was being paid to date me. Bianca and Kat both end up at the prom on the respective arms of Cameron and Patrick, leaving Joey in the proverbial dust. Oh, and Bianca wears this godawful midriff baring two-piece number. Really, it's just completely hideous.

Joey spills the beans about the deal in a rage and justifiably, Kat's pretty pissed. Oh, and Bianca punches Joey and it's awesome. Almost makes up for the dress. But really, not quite.

Back at school, Kat reads her self-referential poem of the movie's namesake, "10 Things I Hate About You":




Everything and everyone comes to blows, but all seems well that ends well. Patrick buys Kat a guitar with his dirty bribe money, Kat's father permits her to go to her first-choice school Sarah Lawrence, and Bianca and Cameron are an item. Everything is fairly neatly tidied up for the ending as expected, but it's still sort of sweet.

It may not have been actual Shakespeare, but the movie did showcase a humor and wittiness that far outpaced its teen film genre competitors. Plus, it had a kickass soundtrack, or at least I perceived it to be back in junior high. Pretty much everyone left theaters humming Letters to Cleo's cover of "I Want You to Want Me", after all.

The movie relied on a lot of cliched teen movie tropes, but it turned some on their head as well. It was a better, smarter version of our stereotypical movie offerings, giving us a new teen world in which senior girls flash their soccer coaches as a diversion tactic and quirky school guidance counselors write smutty romances between sessions. What's not to like?

AOL and Chat Rooms

Once upon a time, our parents didn't have a clue what we were doing online. The internet was a new and exciting place, and it seemed like a safe and inpenetrable fortress of unsupervised mischief. Mind you, this was years before Chris Hansen was popping in to offer you a seat while the decoy internet teen went to go check on the hot tub. There was no catching of predators, no online policing, just pure, unadulterated dangerous fun.

If anything, our parents were more concerned with our tying up the phone lines than our online whereabouts. Sure, we may have been making under-the-table investments with Nigerian princes, but our parents were solely worried about the busy signal clogging our line. Back in the day, there was no wireless or high speed internet connections, there was a little phone jack that shared a common line with our home phones. In a time before universal cell phone ownership, this was a pretty serious inconvenience. Not to mention how annoying that modem sound was when you picked up the phone. Ouch.

When children of the 90s first got in-home internet access, it was a novel and exciting concept. Finally, a relatively captive audience with whom to share our innermost thoughts, dreams, and anonymous flirtations. Once we could actually forge a connection, that is. I'd sit for scores of minutes at a time, waiting impatiently for that little running AOL man to enter his successive phase of connectedness. Words like "modem failure" and "inability to connect" haunted us, forcing us to redial and redial until finally we could enter our glorious online community.




At our house, there were three potential modem phone numbers with which to reach the internet, and we'd frantically alternate between our options, forever seeking a signal. It's remarkable to think that just a decade earlier, we were content to wait five minutes to catch even the briefest glimpse of the internet. Nowadays, if a website takes more than three seconds to load we're all about one step away from tossing the laptop out the window. Back then, though, these were different times. More patient times. And of course, more salacious.

No sooner than we'd heard that familiar robotically enthusiastic declaration "You've Got Mail!", we'd be clamoring to reach our favorite chat rooms. As AOL was the premier internet service of the 90s, a good chunk of the online population could be found roaming these virtual spaces. It was a novel concept for the time: you could actually communicate with many people at once! People you didn't know! People who we should trust indefinitely to be telling the truth, the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth!


So help us God, this was probably not the case. Judging how things usually went our own end, it's doubtable that these new virtual pals were honest about any element of their existence other than that they were currently connected to the internet. The original chat rooms were popular online pickup scenes, the equivalent of an internet singles bar. Only, truth be told, all the people in those rooms were probably either under the age of 12 or over the age of 50.

While today a notion like that might raise a red flag or two, these things were chalked up to good, clean fun back then. Well, er, sort of clean. Children delighted in their ability to fool others, though looking back it's unlikely that my friends and I fooled anyone with our fifth grade writing skills and general misunderstanding of innuendos.

From the moment a person asked, "A/S/L", you knew it was on. That is, imploring his chatroommates to give their age, sex, and location. I don't know about you, but this was a great source of fun for my pals and I as children. In one room we could be exotic 18-year old Brazilian twins working to get our modeling careers off the ground while in the next we could easily slip into the guise of a mysterious lonelyhearts Spanish exchange student seeking a nice middle aged office drone to. The possibilities were truly endless.





Sometimes we may have outed ourselves as the 12/Fs we really were, but in general the idea was to fool others into believing the bull we were serving up. I imagine parents everywhere would have been pretty uneasy to find that their young children were being approached online with the request to "cyber", but again, these were different times. Very few people had considered the notion of troubling internet connections, we were too enthralled by its exciting possibilities to see any danger in letting children loose into chatrooms with a slew of card-carrying NAMBLA members and known sex offenders.

In our innocence, though, we were too giddy to be bothered by these facts. These were the days before MySpace, Facebook, or online dating, so people everywhere used this free market chatroom environment to make connections. Users formed full-fledged online relationships with people they had never even met. Sure, in real life you may have been a Dungeons and Dragons playing loner with duct-taped glasses, but online you could be the suave AOL romeo you'd always dreamed of being. Until your potential mate requested a picture, of course. Photographic evidence is a bitch.






The original AOL was a kid's paradise. It's going date us immensely when we someday tell our children of plugging a common search term in a search engine and having zero results, but we'll know that we were the true online pioneers. We knew the thrill of navigating the unknown wildernesses of the internet before firewalls and parental controls and the like neutralized the treacherous terrain. Sure, we may have talked to a pedophile or two, but we lived, dammit. We lived. Well, vicariously through our internet alteregos. But you know what I mean.