Champions (Mighty Ducks, The)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Family	None
Rating
Year Released	1992
Running Time	99:20 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (60:00)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Stephen Herek
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Emilio Estevez Joss Ackland Lane Smith Heidi Kling
Case	Transparent Amaray
RPI	$36.95	Music	David Newman

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	English (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) French (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s) Italian (Dolby Digital 2.0 , 192 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	?Yes	Smoking	No
Subtitles	Dutch French English for the Hearing Impaired	Annoying Product Placement	Yes, sort of - refer synopsis
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Of course, many will be saying that is no great deal considering that we are talking about Champions (a.k.a. The Mighty Ducks)! However, I would not be one of them for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is about hockey - one of my two great loves amongst the American professional sports (after my beloved Green Bay Packers of course), and therefore starting out with a distinct advantage. Secondly, it is set in one of my favourite cities - Minneapolis. The truth is, though, that this really is a film that shows how things change in the world. Made in 1992, this film was arguably part of the promotional push undertaken by the Disney Corporation for their new hockey team, The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim - which happened to start playing in the 1993-94 NHL season. The sequels push the promotional aspect even more as the actual term shirt changes to that of the real life Mighty Ducks. The changes in the sporting world are highlighted here by the appearance of the Minnesota North Stars - a team that moved some years ago to Dallas and became the Dallas Stars - in an arena that no longer exists. It used to be over the road from a small shopping centre known as Mall Of America, but the last time I went to Minneapolis, the arena had been demolished.

    But enough of my reminiscing over the best game on ice and on with the film. Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez) is a former hot shot pee-wee hockey player who grew up to be a very successful lawyer. Winning is everything and every court case is treated as if it were a Stanley Cup final itself - and he goes for the "W" every time. This naturally does not endear him to everyone - especially the District Attorney and a judge who get some divine intervention as far as retribution is concerned when Gordon is arrested for driving under the influence. After his boss does a deal with the judge, Gordon finds himself on a leave of absence from work with 500 hours of community service to fulfil as coach of a local pee-wee hockey team. Only this is no ordinary pee-wee hockey team - this is District 5, the worst of the worst basically. No talent, no equipment, no coach. But things go from bad to worse when the totally self-indulged, and disinterested, Gordon finds his first game as coach is against his old team and old coach - The Hawks and Jack Reilly (Lane Smith). We start to see what went wrong as far as Gordon was concerned and go along for the ride as he attempts to rediscover the joy of hockey - with a little help from money from his boss and equipment from his old mentor Hans (Joss Ackland). We also get the obligatory romantic sub-plot as the slowly reforming Gordon takes a shine to Casey Conway (Heidi Kling), mother of one of his players, Charlie (Joshua Jackson). And being Disney we get the obligatory happy ending as this bunch of losers and their loser coach hit the heights.

    Okay, the story is so clichéd it is not funny. There is little of obvious originality here, and this plods a very well-worn path of moralization that even by Disney standards is pretty well-dosed with saccharine. But then again, that is part of the charm of the film. From minute ten it is obvious where this film is going but you still sit there and enjoy the ride anyway. All very strictly by the Disney numbers book, there is not much here that is going to be confused with great film making at all. The acting is pretty much by the book, with little flair coming from anywhere. Emilio Estevez has barely established any credibility as an actor anyway, and this is certainly no great highlight in his career resume. Heidi Kling is so good that she has barely disappeared without trace as far as film is concerned, judging by the rather short list in her entry on the Internet Movie Database. Lane Smith fills his typical solid role playing here, with a decent if not especially memorable effort as the win-at-all-costs coach. Director Stephen Herek pulls no great strings here and does the by-the-book job required of him by Disney.

    All in all, there is nothing at all memorable here, yet it is a film that I enjoy coming back to for some reason on a regular basis. Despite that however, it has to be said that what we have been given here is a decidedly ordinary presentation even by the lacklustre standards of Disney. There are plenty of better family films out there in the market place and only real fans of the main cast need apply here.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and despite the claim on the packaging it is not 16x9 enhanced. Since we have now entered the age of digital television in Australia and widescreen, high definition televisions are going to become far more prevalent over the next three years in Australian homes. Quite why therefore the likes of Disney continue to turn out sub-standard non-16x9 enhanced transfers defies any comprehension. It really smacks as nothing more than blatant snubbing of the consumer in Region 4. Rather interestingly too, the end credits are presented in a Pan & Scan format!

    My immediate reaction to this transfer was that there was something just not right about it. It gives me the distinct impression, especially early on, that the film has been transferred ever-so-slightly out of focus, and I am not talking about the opening sequence which has an intentionally "dreamy" quality about it. The scenes around the car on the lake and even later in the film around the 48:30 mark all seem to me to be just not quite right as far as the focus is concerned. I even went and verified the impression immediately with the Region 1 release of the film, and that seems to be much more in focus. I would have to say that overall this is a mediocre transfer and this is reflected in the fact that the transfer is not an especially sharp effort at all. Depth of field is quite limited it would seem and this creates quite a diffuse style of transfer in general. Detail is not especially wonderful and again reflects a mediocre transfer. I would certainly not call this a clear transfer and whilst grain did not seem to be much of an issue at all, I got the distinct impression that it was about to break out in abundance all the time. There did not seem to be any low level noise problems in the transfer.

    I have fewer concerns regarding the colours here as they are nicely saturated and have a nicely natural feel to them in general. Perhaps the blacks could have had a bit more depth to them but this would be the only real complaint. There is nothing approaching oversaturation here, despite the well-saturated nature of the colours in general, and colour bleed is not an issue.

    There did not appear to be any significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer, as the slight loss of resolution on some pan shots would seem to be inherent in the source material since they have been present in all previous VHS tape and DVD incarnations of the film that I own. There is a rather consistent problem throughout the transfer with aliasing, however, that at times does get far too obvious to ignore. The usual culprits come into play here, but this is really a disappointing aspect of the transfer - indeed the aliasing seems to be worse here than in the Region 1 release, and that seems to be generally acknowledged not to be too great either. Film artefacts get a decent run here, too, and do get just a little obvious at times when the bigger white efforts make an appearance. However, the transfer appears to be quite blessed with black efforts too, even though these are less obvious.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming dead on 60:00, just at the end of a scene. It is quite a decent effort and not too noticeable, and not disruptive to the film.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Dialogue comes up pretty well here and there is no problem with understanding what is being said. There did not appear to be any problems with audio sync either, which is a minor issue with the Region 1 DVD on my set up.

    The original music score is from the pen of David Newman and a quite ordinary effort it is too - as befitting a Disney by-the-numbers film. Nothing memorable at all in my view, but reasonably supportive of the film in a typically Disney schmaltzy kind of way.

    Whilst this is supposed to be a surround-encoded soundtrack, I would hardly have noticed it. There is minimal use made of the surround channels at all, with the rear channels being virtually silent throughout. Not even when the crowd noise gets up a tad do we find any serious action out of the rear channels. The whole soundtrack is quite front-and-centre, but that is not too bad an issue here since much of the film does not require that much in the way of surround support. Obviously the bass channel gets no workout here at all. The sound at the very end of the film, between 93:30 and 94:10 is quite badly distorted in the cheering, which detracts quite noticeably from the film. Overall, another mediocre effort dragged down a little by the distortion.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

• Preview trailers (a euphemism for adverts!)
• English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack

• Nothing

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
27th March, 2001.