All Like Mike Films are in Some Way About Fatherhood and I Cannot Think of a Reason as to Why

Themes are a funny thing. I remember when I was first learning media in High School and the word themes was thrown around I found it frustrating and annoying. Why make me learn about what the film is trying to say? Who cares? What does that tell me? I still sometimes try and ignore a films themes so I can enjoy it as, I guess, just pure entertainment, but sometimes it's getting deep in the gut of the film, where all it's intentions are laid bare, that makes a viewing worthwhile.

Like Mike 2: Streetball, and, to a lesser or greater extent, the original Like Mike, are films about fatherhood. Why both films, wherein the main plot focusses on a pair of magic shoes, would choose to explore this thematically is a mystery, but it happens regardless and there's nothing I can do about it. The first Like Mike features Lil' Bowwow playing an orphan who finds a pair of magical shoes and gets pro-athlete powers, throughout the course of the film he establishes a father son relationship with a pro basketball player and eventually gets adopted. The second Like Mike film features a totally different kid who finds the same pair of magic shows and whose father is never around, until eventually his dad decides to be there for him basically on a whim. So why? Why choose fatherhood for your magic shoe movie? Well you know what, it was a fine decision for Like Mike 1, if you're choosing themes it's a fine one, I won't get in your way. But for Like Mike 2 I can't help but wonder if they chose fatherhood simply because the first film featured it, which would be a pretty bizarre decision, as though the writers were like: "kids are watching these films for the father son bonding! They are eating that shit up! This isn't a film about magic shoes, it's a film about being loved." I do not understand it.

But all that aside, Like Mike 2: Streetball is by no means the worst film I've ever seen, in fact, as straight-to-DVD sequels go it was pretty entertaining. For a sequel to a film which was pretty much a Lil' Bowwow vehicle it performs admirably. The direction was tight and choppy, the colors vibrant, the dialogue natural enough for it to get my tick of approval, and nearly every character was a blast. I went into this film expecting something awful, maybe a bit racist, and came out the other end having seen something wholly different.

Before we lose our pants to the great beyond, this was not a good film. If someone was like: "man I am bored of regular movies, Jackson do you know of any hidden gems?" I wouldn't immediately bring up Like Mike 2: Streetball. But for the film it was, I was impressed.

I think that someone cared about this film. No one cared about Air Bud 3: World Pup, but someone cared about this. You can see it in the way color is used, from the bright red of the protagonists basketball jerseys to the faded pink of the antagonists car every shade has a vibrant presence. You can see it in the tight direction of the basketball scenes, the sweeping shots which follow the path of the basketball, the tenseness of the final moments before things go to pot. It's nice, I enjoy that. When someone's having a good time, the audience is having a good time.

The characters are what made this film. None of them were more than two-dimensional, but they were all so different and unique that I loved each of them. From the pudgy white kid who should, by all kids movie logic, be a nerd but is for some reason just a basketball player, to the pro-basketballer awkward cowboy, who has the nickname Miracle Whip, to the antagonist, the protagonists skeezy cousin Ray who dances and laughs around the set, eating everything up. 

I guess this film was a surprise, in the end. A not awful viewing. Not great, but not awful. I didn't have a bad time but I would be hard pressed to watch it again.

At One Point the Soccer Team is Disqualified Because One of Them is a Dog. This is the Best Part of the Film.

I have never seen an Air Bud film before. I didn’t think there would be much I had to learn. I sort of assumed a film where a golden retriever is good at basketball wasn’t the kind of film with massive implications for its sequels. The dog is good at basketball, he wins a championship, move on. I didn’t even really think the second film would be necessary to watch, the dog is great at American Football, he wins a championship, again, move on. But once I was ten minutes into this film I realized I was adrift in a sea of nineties hair and drunk clowns.

 The plot is basically the same as the ones I’ve listed above; replace Basketball or Football with Soccer and you’ve got the basic idea. Throw in a forced love story between Air Bud and another golden retriever and some nasty dog nappers and you have the entire film. It seems like pretty typical kids movie fare; a dog farts, someone falls over, a child is precocious, credits, but it’s not. It’s just not. The whole film feels wrong, just wrong, the movement, the dialogue, the story. None of it seems natural in the slightest

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen anyone try to improvise a story, perhaps at some kind of theatre sports event, or, better yet, if you’ve ever watched someone telling a particularly involved lie, but if you have, then you should have a good idea of how this film moves from one sequence to the next. It feels as though the director had all these sets and costumes, three days in which to film, and literally no script. Every single line of dialogue feels improvised. If I found out there was no script I would genuinely not be surprised. It feels like they just put the actors in costume and yelled, “THIS WOMAN IS DESIREABLE!” the instant before they started rolling. Less is more, pretty much always, a good film is economical with its dialogue; it uses it for exposition and character building in a way that seems genuine and natural. The third film in the Air Bud saga treats dialogue like air freshener, heaping it over everything and just hoping.

   This film, at its core, is a film without charm. It’s not nice to watch a film where everyone obviously doesn’t want to be there. The characters are just big walking stereotypes, but they’re not even fully fledged examples of that. A character that is just: ‘Nerdy Kid’ in big block letters is fine, I can handle that; it can be great. But a character that is three lines of vaguely nerdy dialogue and a painful joke about kilts is just offensive. The romantic interest is a… well they say she’s British, but it’s either a South African or perhaps even an Australian girl. They try to make her sound more English by peppering her dialogue with awkward Briticisms like ‘Twit’ and, apparently, ‘Higgledy Piggledy’, but it just makes the whole affair all the more painful to experience. The dog nappers are lazily evil, they want to steal a dog. They keep calling it a poodle, but it’s clearly not a poodle. I don’t know if this is a joke. That, I mean that’s pretty much a microcosm of the film. Something happens and I am at a loss as to whether it was intentional or just more awkwardness.

   I hate this film, with Ace Ventura Jr. I had some respect for the goofiness of the whole affair, the cartoonish nonsense, the fat child channelling Jim Carrey. This film is soulless though, no one is having a good time, things happen and I don’t understand why they’re happening. So many subplots are occurring at once that I genuinely had trouble keeping track of them. I’m going to try and list them, let’s see: Romantic Subplot for Lead Male, Romantic Subplot for Lead Dog, Awkward Step Father, New Butler for Female Lead’s Father, Evil Dog Nappers, and Lead Dog becomes father. That’s too many, like, at least five subplots too many. Come on Air Bud.

   There’s so much more wrong with this film, so many things that just don’t make sense, ninety-five percent of the first half is dogs moving from one place to another, and the second half is basically just montages. Anything that’s not one of the two is an awkward exchange of dialogue. I thought, when I first became disturbed and confused, that maybe watching the rest of the Air Bud canon would make at least some of this make sense, but now that it’s over I highly doubt it. The very fact that this film went on to spawn at least ten sequels and spin offs is absolutely mind blowing. How did Director Bill Bannerman manage to make a hideous mess out of: Dog is good at Soccer and saves the day?

   

Dogs Farting is the Funniest Thing in the World for Children but Leaves Me Uninspired

Ace Ventura Pet Detective Jr. is a film of small victories. It’s not a good film; it will never find itself on an IMBD Top One Hundred list. Unless that list is something like: Top One Hundred films which feature a farting dog, and even then there’s bound to be better farting dog films than this. It’s not even really the kind of film which might one day achieve something approaching cult status; this is not the film people will bring out when someone suggests a bad movie night. No, Ace Ventura Pet Detective Jr. is the kind of film that makes people say: “There was a third movie? Wow.” But it is a film of small victories. I stand by that. I did not come out of the film feeling regretful or as though I had just wasted an hour and thirty minutes of my life. I wasn’t elated, let’s not kid ourselves, but I wasn’t disgusted. As much of a cash-grab as the film almost certainly was, there were some redeeming features which raise it above the other cheap DVD’s you’ve never heard of.
   Josh Flitter as the titular Ace Ventura Jr. is just a delight. I cannot stress enough how much he made this film for me. I went in expecting fart jokes and bullies falling in the mud, and instead I got a kid channelling Jim Carrey at his hammiest. It’s not just that Josh repeats some of Jim Carrey’s classic catchphrases; somehow the kid manages to match Carrey’s frenetic energy. The quick movements, the snappy one liners, it’s all there. The other performances leave something to be desired, Ace’s cohorts for his Pet Detecting consists of a nerdy kid called A-Plus and a girl who was so boring I have genuinely forgotten her name and refuse to look it up. Neither child puts a great deal of passion into their performances, and when they’re acting around Flitter they just become background noise. 

   The plot is hackneyed and clichéd. I wholeheartedly believe you could probably guess it with minimal to no prompting on my part. Ace Ventura Jr. is an everyday child who loves animals, a panda goes missing, Ace Ventura discovers the culprit is exactly who you thought it would be. It’s typical children’s movie fare and really I shouldn’t have expected anything less. This is a good time, however, to bring up the confusing connections this film has to the rest of the Ace Ventura cannon. So in this film Ace Ventura Jr. is the child of the original Ace Ventura. At a pivotal point in the film Ace Ventura Jr’s mother imparts onto him the knowledge that the original Ace Ventura died in a plane accident trying to save some geese. It is also heavily implied that the reason Ace Ventura Jr. is so skilled with Animal Detecting is due to some kind of mutant “Ventura Gene” which all those of the Ventura Bloodline carry. I question the rationale behind making your films subplot more or less revolve around the fact that your star power is gone. They keep mentioning Jim Carrey’s Ace, reminding the audience of how great a time we had with him back in the first two films, which in turn makes us realize how rubbish the film we’re watching is. It’s all very strange. 

   I scoured the film for some interesting use of cinematography, some amazing example of editing or sound that I could either praise or criticise. Unfortunately I came up more or less naught. The film is intercut with sound effects, which, in stark contrast to what one would assume, actually made the film feel a little punchier and snappier, if detracting from the films credibility. Half way through the film Ace Ventura Jr. is bequeathed a key to the attic, within which is an outfit almost exactly identical to Ace Ventura’s from the first two films. This was entertaining, but only briefly. I think the film says it best itself when, at one point in one of the many interactions Ace Ventura Jr. has with security guards, the security guard says: “someone get this cartoon out of here.” He is a cartoon, and, in a way, so was Carrey. But Carrey’s Ventura was a cartoon in a more or less non cartoony world, he was an oddball and everyone else was normal. This film is one big cartoon, with sound effects and wackiness around every corner. But like I said before, little victories, if you’re at a little cousins house, or a child’s birthday party and this is the film that comes on, don’t despair, Josh Flitter is awesome and manic, and at several points a dog farts.

Nearly Every Disney Film has a Sequel Which Went Straight to DVD and You Had No Idea.

I often wonder how film-makers handle having their film skip a theatrical release and go straight to DVD. I feel that if I had put a lot of time and effort into making a film only for someone to tell me that it was going to end up in a barrel at a two dollar shop, I would be pretty upset. I think if your film ends up in a barrel you should take a long hard look at yourself. 

   

   This blog is going to be all about that. All the films that ended up in barrels. All the films people bring up at parties when they're like: "hey did you know Ace Ventura had a third film called Ace Ventura Jr? It was terrible." These are the films I will review.

   So take my hand, and let's step into a world of terrible production values, child actors who never appear again, people selling out, right there in front of you, but most of all, barrels.

Jackson B.