Space Buddies: Oedipus without the incest

Enough of these negative posts bashing various positions within the NFL and whatever else.

How about something positive.

Space Buddies may be the greatest straight to video release yet this year.

Both the Air Buddies and Air Bud series are direct to video now, but the Air Bud series is much easier to ridicule because of its ridiculousness. The original had a lot of pure dramatic elements. It wasn't a comedy or a children's movie per se, it was a feel good film, a story about redemption, a story that taught a kid to believe in himself. The dog just happened to be how it happened. As the kid learned more sports (presumptively) so did the dog, even when it seemed entirely impossible for the dog to do so.

The Air Buddies series, on the other hand, isn't grounded in that realistic original that prevents the movies from truly embracing the farcical. On the contrary. The very premise that the dogs can talk (as can the other animals) opens up the entire world to put these puppies on fantastic adventures that seem to be able to work within its own world.

The movie does have some of the problems of standard kid fare. The ending is horribly predictable, there are some pretty big plotholes, there are some fairly large inconsistencies (in the matter of physics and the like, things not needing to be explained); but it still works.

Really, the film has some of the best dramatic irony since Sophocles' classic Oedipus Rex, the standard of the definition. No one but the audience knows who is on board the shuttle until they reach the moon. No one but the audience knows who the villian is until the end. No one but the audience knows how the shuttle manages to make certain corrections until the end.

-- And it's things like that which make the film legitamately good on its own merits. Sure the ending is incredibly standard, but I wanted to see how they'd get there, and how certain things would unfold. The journey was the destination itself.

The characters could be a little more dynamic, and maybe the plot a little more twisted, but hey, it's a kids movie. It is meant to entertain.

It entertains.

-- Knuttel