TBG 74 - Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch

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1:00for a limited time get one of these jimmy john sandwiches jimmy chips and a drink for only eight dollars and ninety nine cents choose the fan favorite turkey tom with all natural turkey or the pepe with smoked ham and provolone the eight ninety nine meal deal at jimmy johns oh that's good limited time at participating locations valid on turkey tom and the pepe eight inch only includes chips and regular fountain beds up charges apply on bottle beds premium sides and desserts not valid with other offers tax add-ons extra bank of america champions everyone who dares to ask what would you like the power to do as a coach to sixteen competitors in Augusta national women's amateurs i asked myself this question every season to help my athletes keep their eye on the ball far beyond any course they play bank america is proud to be a presenting partner of the Augusta national women's amateurs thank you america name number ftsc hey folks hello my name is ellen adair and i am erick gildey and welcome to take me into the ball

2:04game yeah in an effort to bring the entire take me into the ball game project into one feed we are going to be releasing our old episodes on picture list week by week yes enjoy for the first time or revisit an old favorite and so now this is one of them hey folks hi what are we doing here we're doing a podcast oh that's right we're doing a podcast called take me into the ballgame take me into the whole new ballgame that's gone to the dogs baby it's a jump but it is literal sometimes indeed it is literal in the case of this movie that is erick gildey hi and my name is ellen adair i'm actually pretty excited

3:09to be here despite the the the early huh what was me yeah we're just we're in the past here we're in the middle of the holiday season there's a lot going on there is and so yeah we're just like here it is you know did the December and in order to celebrate the reason for the season we're going to talk about airbud seventh inning fetch airbud seventh inning fetch and wow wow i mean even just the sort of musical intro that i usually do here i'm gonna i'm gonna put a pin in the music but even that is just like a record scratch of like wait what's going on what are we doing because you may remember that it has like such a like slow weird like kind of like opening of a

4:11of a like thriller like there it doesn't have family film opening music there's an interesting opening vibe to this movie that we will discuss more in story yeah we're gonna discuss a lot it's gonna be strange it remains to be seen whether in the parlance of Christmas when we earlier were visited by the ghost of podcasts like to come indeed whether this was like a a good possibility or a bad but that future ghost is usually pretty ominous so maybe we should have listened to them anyway the ghost of podcast present i feel like actually pretty good about it okay hot take i think airbud seventh

5:11inning fetch is a great name oh that's true that's true every single time that i have told somebody that right now we're doing airbud seventh inning fetch they have laughed nice nice nice and upon other occasions we've got a hit on our hands when i have talked about yes there's an airbud movie that i've never seen that we will do on the podcast airbud seventh inning fetch people usually chuckle fair enough fair enough well folks this one's for you so airbud going seventh inning fetch is a 2002 film directed by Robert Vince and Robert Vince also had a story credit there with the screenplay by Sarah Sutton this is Robert Vince's third directorial effort following MVP colon most valuable primate and MVP two colon most vertical primate that that's one where the chimpanzee

6:16is a really good skateboarder and i think that first one's a hockey one i was thinking it was some kind of Olympic event potentially no well you know it uh it i mean that's a whole other universe and like this dude has found his niche because he's got those and he also has gone on to direct the air buddies series of of films or whatever they are as well as the Santa pause series so grateful to have you know found found that little spot of success in the world way to go Robert Vince yeah you really just need to find your niche yeah exactly exactly many years i said i don't care what my type is i just care that i have one yeah exactly exactly so in this entry of the uh e a b c u the extended air bud cinematic universe um that's all there is our our young hero

7:20Josh of the series has gotten older and also that he's off to college and handing the franchise reigns over to his kid sister Andrea who's super nervous to start junior high school and also misses you know she's gonna miss her bro being around she looks for a place to fit in to this new school environment with her friend Tammy and uh they end up on the baseball team together because Tammy's real good uh Andrea's not but it's a package deal baby air bud helps Andrea get better after Tammy gets hurt and uh they make it all back in time to play the big game against the baboons baboons there's a bit more to it than that but um arguably not a whole lot more to it than that and uh so i i feel like we might have a few nits to pick here and so i'm gonna just keep that

8:20that intro synopsis part a little short this time great yeah i know that we've got a lot to talk to airs to bud before we sleep or something i know that we've got a lot to talk about yeah before we get to the 20 to 80 scouting scale that we use to grade to this prospect now we did not at the beginning mention that we are two actors who grade baseball movies on the 20 to 80 scouting scale if you are just joining us for air bud seventh inning fetch but i would also just like to mention that we are two actors who are currently in a movie that you in the future can see it is called cryptid oh my goodness c-r-y-p-t-i-d and as long as we don't make a single scent from this podcast we might as well be able to promote something when it's out there in the world see us both Eric and i are in this movie cryptid that is on amazon and apple and they're on those things and a million other different platforms so please give it a watch it's fun it's fun ellen's terrific

9:26erics also terrific i am in the movie so the 20 to 80 scouting scale if you are just joining us and you are not familiar with it the most important thing to know about this scale is that 50 is average on the scale however that is not an average minor league player that is an average major league player so if you find a prospect and you think that they grade out as 50 in some particular area that's actually a good thing it means you think they'll stick at the major league level so the only thing that really came to mind and and this could be tough but i'm interested to see where it goes is dog names oh because i know that this can be like a little bit subjective uh depends on various you know whatever but but in terms of like almost like types of names yeah i guess we sort of what i was thinking and for a 50 i would just like lay out there some of the classic like cartoony dog names of like rex and phyto and like duke and things like like the names that are like

10:33the norm and rock well dog names yeah yeah the reason that i agree that those are a 50 is because i think that now many of those names would be used with a little bit of a knowing wink you know i named my dog phyto i think there would have been a moment in human history when i would have said no no that is an uncreative 45 or 40 dog name yeah but i think now it's come back around it's sort of like you know people giving their babies very old timey names for sure yeah so as i just alluded to 45 and 40 are less good than 50 45 is like fringy but will play 40 is kind of like might be up and down with this particular skill 30 and 20 as you might expect are less and less good 20 being like does not have this skill so yeah i don't know i feel like in the 45 40 range i feel like one thing that comes to mind is like i don't know i think that

11:38there are good and bad like person names to ascribe to a dog and i feel like some of the like it's fine names are some of the like maybe like less inspired of those or like names that are person name but like i don't necessarily see as being a dog name i don't know like errand or something see so agree to disagree okay i think that giving a dog a very normal person name that wouldn't be normally associated with a dog is funny i do too and therefore like possibly a 55 but i don't think any regular person name is like i i don't know i think that there are some that are more fitting of a dog maybe it has to do a little bit with like vowels versus consonants because you know they say that like a a good dog name has some i don't know like starts with a consonant and not a vowel is all yeah and maybe has like a couple consonants in it because like it makes it easier for them to recognize it yes and i think that there are some some names that sort of like maybe

12:44don't make use of of that tendency than others but i don't know that's just what i threw out there what do you think yeah i mean i think that a 40 is just a super uncreative dog name which is i think what you're alluding to a little bit because like for example i have never met a dog named mike or steve uh-huh but i would be delighted to meet a dog with either of those names yeah because i've never met a dog with that name yeah yeah yeah i'm aware that our dog whose name is mabel that there are you know now i have met other people with dogs also named mabel and so it is not the most creative of names so i can hardly say that i'm a bastion of dog name creativity i named after the character of mabel children and an ideal husband cool well that makes sense to me but below that i wonder where we are for me like i'm not sure whether i want to put this like at the

13:47very very bottom or like close to the bottom but when the name is sort of like the cute nickname again i'm i'm thinking of a certain ex that i had who had a uh dockson named schnoofy and um and i had i had trouble with it because i'm like that's what you call the dog that has you know like a good a good uh like do you have that on the dog's birth certificate right yes you know what i mean like like don't name it the nickname yeah when the when the nickname when the pet name is the actual name yeah and with some mabel gets all kinds of goofy silly adorable names but like joseph was a proper name yeah when she goes in for a job interview she can feel like they'll take her seriously exactly exactly anything else that like strikes you though within that um category no i don't think so maybe this ultimately comes down to like two boring or two cute there's sort of like the the porridge needs to be just right or something because i think that sometimes like overly complicated

14:50names that are just being like really like precious are also i don't know it's like forcing a story of the dog on a person or whatever right yeah well because i was trying to think food names for dogs but i think that what widely varies depending upon what the food is uh for example i frequently call mabel muffin as a nickname but if i met a dog named muffin i would feel poorly for the dog i'd be suspicious right but i've met dogs named tomato tomato is on my positive list yeah and taco and there's a dog in our neighborhood named momo after the Tibetan dumplings and i think that those are all excellent dog names yeah what is maybe not excellent i feel like is this dog name rating i feel like this is not one of the better ones but i think we should push through yeah let's let's move along yeah so 55 is above average 60 this is in the baseball world 60 is excellent 70 is a superstar and 80 is a hall of

15:58fame level talent see so like i had the like on the opposite of this also like person names but i don't know if it's just like having a little bit of like closiveness to them that like consonant like heft or also just being of a certain like variety that to me just make sense to a dog there's a dog in our neighborhood named Pablo he's super cool oh yeah oh love it yeah um of course we do have above that and i i don't know that this is a trend exactly maybe it is but i think it's something that that we would probably do in any age is the old timey human names for a person i love old timey human names for a dog yeah like though they're both vowel names i've never met a dog named ethal but i think it's a great name for a dog like i feel like ethal might be tricky it that might be a 45 for me i mean i just think it's a i understand it doesn't have a consonant but i think it's a great name for a dog in some ways this is a big question of sort of like faith versus science

17:00right yeah like it feels right but the numbers are telling us otherwise yeah i mean similarly i've always wanted to have a dog name to aldrin on oh yeah yeah yeah also ask a wild but yeah i remember liking the name apner oh yeah apner is good yeah it does have you know obviously not the actual creator of baseball but it does have baseball connotations to it yeah and and some nice consonants exactly but i'm the difficulty that i'm having with this is what is an 80 grade dog name like i can't even think of what is the best dog name that i've ever heard where i was like um oh that's the best dog name i've ever heard yeah maybe you can present one but i feel like i'm blanking no a cinder bark no no um not for me personally um babe drool no that's terrible it's not it's not bad but it's not an 80 i don't know i guess i was thinking uh old timey i don't

18:03know what i was thinking boy this is a disaster i'm gonna hit the eject button um but you know we understand the basic premise here which is that uh more number is good and less number is bad yeah which is why we spent so long talking about yeah so so uh anyway there we go you know what would be a terrible name for a dog what rubberty lee if i met somebody in their dog with name rubberty lee i'd be like this is a problem i i would pause for sure p a w s both kinds both kinds of pot okay oh man okay yeah let's keep this going great so our very first tool that we will be applying the 20 to 80 scouting scale to is amount of baseball yes yes enough of that nonsense let's get back to the matter at hand which is seriously discussing the amount of baseball in air bud seventh inning fact yeah let's let's get with the

19:05program many many lolly gagging around apologies for my my my bad analogy which took time away from the discussion at hand which is i think abner double day is why i thought of rubberty lee all of a sudden okay please go ahead oh my gosh okay um so here's the thing we're like 24 minutes into this film before we even see a baseball and yet i feel upon reflection that there is actually a decent amount of baseball in this film there is a series of well there's the tryouts first of all and we get to see some like catching and fielding there's like a decent little amount we get some games like or at least little flashes of games where we see that Tammy is kind of becoming a mythic figure in the community getting like above the fold front page photos and yeah yeah more on that

20:12in a little bit and you know we also like so they're they're like four or five games of that and then we also get the journey of like Andrea getting better and by that i mean she has one practice with a dog and then suddenly becomes like a lights out pitcher yeah it's amazing especially like like there's there's some implication there that a dog helped her become a better pitcher yes which like you know it's not even like oh no like this is how you like catch a ball which is a thing that a dog does yeah yes yeah oh my gosh it's great and then of course we get the final game against the baboons which it follows more closely the the last few innings of that game then a lot of other movies do for their for their big game and then of course in the final moments of the film we also see airbud at the very end of the world series but we can get into that

21:13in a little bit all that to say though i think at the end of the day it's not bad actually yeah i'm really have two minds about this which is it's normally one of the more straightforward of the tools so on a sheer number of instances of baseball it is good but not exceptional so i count 11 instances and that is counting a couple of instances of buddy the dog catching a baseball in his mouth so i had to think about this because normally for a scene to constitute as an instance of baseball for me it needs to involve a ball and a glove or a ball and a bat in use but since nothing in the rulebook about a ball and little doggie teeth since buddy doesn't use a glove yeah he never uses one he just uses his mouth like it's something that i've often said that mouths are the hands of dogs like right there they're their mouths but they're also their hands it's why like a dog wanting to lick you it's like you wanting to pet a dog that's the that's the

22:17corollary there anyway dog bites you that's just a firm handshake just a firm handshake so in a way buddy's glove is always present oh i like this every scene now it's not a baseball scene if there's not also a baseball and if the glove and the ball are not in use but i i think that this means that it counts when he snags a ball out of the air it counts as an instance of baseball and i don't mind the precedent that this sets that that any instance of a dog catching a baseball in a movie is also an instance of baseball like i cannot see this coming back to bite me in a future scouting trip but this does not for me really ameliorate the fact that as you mentioned the first baseball scene is almost a third of the way through this movie and that's after we've seen soccer football and we've seen so much basketball i'll get into that later we saw some gymnastics these some gymnastics yeah but they they really make us wait for it which frequently

23:23i don't like and i think furthermore that the dog does not really play baseball until 48 minutes into the film like we have come to this movie to see a dog play baseball and that doesn't happen until it's over halfway and that's 48 human minutes this 48 human minutes yeah i think that's important to mention yeah that's like it's like the Lord of the Rings trilogy so the dog comes in in full uniform 52 minutes into the film and no one is surprised on either side of the screen everyone in the movie is yelling buddy because everyone knows that this dog is a sports phenom but we the viewers we have suffered for so long just waiting to see a dog in a baseball uniform it's true it's true on the other hand like trying to look at it unemotionally it's a tall order right now but like as you alluded to many of the instances of baseball are very very long instances of baseball so it

24:29is the opposite of kind of we see somebody throw a single pitch or like swing at a single pitch and that means that we know that we're at the ballpark instead the tryout scene is like a five minute long sequence and the montage where it's some number of early season games and what is time anyway we'll also we'll get there is also five minutes long and when Tammy is injured and Andrea comes in and ruins everything it's like three minutes so this continues until the final game versus the baboons which is really an extended sequence like you said so the baseball in this film is weighted to the back half but also when there's baseball there's like a real depth of an amount of baseball it comes out incredibly strong yeah I don't know I'm not entirely sure how loose I'm gonna be with my high scoring and so I feel like if I've got an opportunity to be generous I'm gonna take it I'm gonna give this a 60 it's the holidays keep the change it's the holidays I think it is a 60 I

25:35think it is I mean oh follow la la la la la la la yeah just just given the the the intensity and the depth of the baseball when it happens I could see it being a 55 it's definitely above a 50 I think that that is yeah but yeah I'm gonna go ahead and go with the 60 as well I think also it does have to do with the fact that I feel like the movie sort of prepares for it to be like like by the time baseball is introduced you're sort of like I felt kind of like I guess there's not going to be much baseball in this and then like the sort of surprise of the amount like kind of I felt it all the more I guess yeah I think that that's fair like perhaps although often I don't like being made to wait for some amount of baseball in a baseball movie it could be that much like when we took a trip to Cartagena and it rained for like the first two and a half days we were so happy to see the sun and then later when we had a day where it was all sun we could not believe our good

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27:37podcast that free included with prime so anyway like we've got two sixties on there and uh wait now what is the next category that we're going to be talking about as far as airbud colin seventh inning fetch up is concerned you're just such a good podcast host well we've got 60 on amount of baseball but I mean maybe the next one will be even higher yeah maybe it will thank you for that brilliant segue mr erick you'll leave the next category is baseball accuracy uh uh huh yeah okay uh well let's let's crunch those numbers let's crunch those numbers there is a lot to discuss here and look if i've said it once i've said it a million times i give the central premise a pass scoring wise because it is what allows the movie to exist so a dog playing baseball is the real raison d'etre of this film so i cannot summarily score to 20 because a dog can't play baseball

28:40i love that this is like what this is the fourth movie in the airbud franchise yes i haven't seen any of the other airbud movies and i don't know that i have in their entirety either i think i've seen like little clips and funny moments from them but it's great that at this point they're not even like there's nothing in the rulebook that says it they're just like yeah what like we're used to this right yeah yeah the dog comes on in the outfit and everybody's like oh yeah buddy yeah which is a benefit i suppose but also i think a problem for this particular film is we'll get to in a later category sure sure yes but i do think that we need to dive in on the whole concept of a dog playing baseball as seen in this film mm-hmm and i'm going to start with this issue when airbud bats he has to turn his head away from the ball yeah so the number one rule of batting

29:42is to keep your eye on the ball this is a fact that is even repeated in this film but for a dog he's got the bat in his teeth and he kind of moves his head in order to bring the bat through the zone so the coiling and swing initiation all have to be with the head turned away so even if he is like in a hypothetical world able to pick up the spin on the ball coming out of the picture's hand and make a decision as to whether or not he's going to swing when he swings he's still swinging blind there's no way for him to keep his eye on the ball as it goes through the zone this also presumes that a dog holding a baseball bat could swing it and hit a ball without shattering every tooth in its little puppy skull as well like even if you sort of like grant that like well that's an issue of believability and accuracy but like we'll let that slide and yet there's still this major sort of like issue and one that is troublesome not just because like you cannot as a dog

30:49keep your eye on the ball and swing at the same time but also you can't even see like that you're being pitched to and also be ready to swing the bat at the same time which would in theory add a whole other additional motion into the swing because you'd have to sort of like see that the pictures of is like winding up to pitch and then turn your head away from it and then turn it back so much space in between where you don't know when the like what type of a pitch it is you don't have any sense of like where things might be going you don't even know like when the pitcher released the ball yeah I mean I guess what I'm positing is that you have to watch the pitcher release the ball and then as a dog turn your head yeah exactly there's the whole additional motion yeah in order to swing but I mean talk about a hitch in your swing yeah yeah yeah we've got some trouble with the curve type problems here yeah that with this particular prospect Mr. baseball

31:53manager would be like everybody can see it air but yes everybody can see this jacket into kitchen your swing when you have to go into your coiling and swing initiation plus there's really no way for him to leverage his lower half and for a dog it's not even the lower half it's like the lower four fifths it's like everything except for his head in order to get any oomph into the ball and I mean your point about the dog teeth was a very very good point unless the dog is hitting the ball on the sweet spot of the bat like there's going to be a lot of vibrations traveling through the bat it's going to be hard to just keep a handle on it it's true it's true and I and I think I in general had uh well accuracy issues and just general concern for air buds teeth because because not only was this an issue with swinging but also and this veers a little bit into storytelling but it kind of also goes into the accuracy of like if a dog were to play baseball

32:55okay big if right right what position would you have that dog play because I know that I would not have first base be on the short list I'm so glad that you asked this question because I understand why they put him at first base because first base rarely needs to throw in the middle of gameplay there but I feel like they just missed out on an opportunity to have him play at a position where range would be beneficial because golden travers can run I looked this up at 35 miles an hour which is faster than you saying bolt if you translate 35 miles an hour into feet per second it's 51.3 feet per second which would be much faster than even tray turner at 30.3 feet per second yeah I mean you can do I start mentioning tray turner at every five five five seven maybe you do I don't know sky's a limit yeah what position I mean I center field yeah that's what that's where I would go because because yeah there's a lot of transferring that you need to do as a short stop or as really

33:59any other infielder besides a first basement but I yeah I feel like an outfielder feels like the logical place yeah that that makes sense to me too if we accept that someone at third base or short stop can scoop up a ball and throw it as hard as they can at air buds face and him just like catch it nonchalantly and tag first base catcher might also be an option like I know that that becomes like maybe that stretches that conceit a little bit past the point of plausibility but it's like if you're catching these with your snout and and it's not causing a problem then like maybe a little bit faster isn't either and that's what a dog wants to do with a ball anyway is catch it yeah the first problem that I have is how is the dog gonna call the game like it's a dog gonna have pitchcom do you know what I mean it has like different little grouse we're like the tongue to

35:02one side of the mouth versus to the other side of the mouth maybe but it'd be so easy to like just look down I feel like you need to have it have buttons like when you see those dogs that have been trained to you know to be like outside you know food like bed whatever yeah except for you just have to man that would be tough every pitch it like peas a little bit but it's like is it looking at you or away and is it raising the right leg or the left leg I feel like we could figure this out yeah I don't I guess I mean it's obvious that airbud is the creature of the most superior intelligence in this particular film but I still just question it's like game planning also how's it gonna throw the ball back to the picture I mean that that feels like like yes you need an outfield assist but I feel like if if the dog can catch so many balls that are hit to the outfield you could have the other fielder I think this is why center field is the best

36:06position for the dog you could have the other fielder running to meet the dog and then the fielder could just take the ball from the dog yeah I think center field is probably the the correct answer I just enjoy catcher because it it's sort of really explodes some of the things that we just kind of accept fundamentally that bud will catch these balls thrown right at his face yes and also that to some extent buddy does understand the rules of baseball oh yeah which I mean that I'm sorry is not an accurate thing but I assume that that's a sort of you know Rubicon that's been crossed with the you know airbud playing basketball and soccer and I don't what's the football do those come before that and there's a volleyball one too that was after this and yeah it's funny I was trying to like get my head around the series just to be like is there something that I'm missing about and this is kind of a storytelling thing but what I loved is that in every Wikipedia

37:12synopsis whether it was intended as a joke or not it was sort of like in the midst of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah buddy learns that he has the uncanny ability to play and then like whatever the sport of the movie was and I just sort of loved the straightforwardness of like airbud golden receiver while blah blah blah is happening buddy realizes he has the uncanny ability to play football and then like the soccer one uncanny ability to play soccer it's just it seemed very pure I guess yeah that is very pure it's interesting because I actually don't feel like that's the story that I received from this film I feel like buddy knows that he can play baseball oh yeah and it's just everybody else taking a while to figure that out for some reason we'll get to it later yeah so my next question is what is the strike zone on a dog if you think about what would seem to make sense visually it would be something like from the top of the dogs head into the bottom of their chest mm-hmm but there's really only one plane through which the dog can bring the bat like at the

38:12top of that strike zone oh yeah and it feels unfair to the pitcher to say that this strike zone is basically like the size of the dog's head but if the strike zone is larger than that you could basically get a dog out every single time by pitching anything low in the zone you know yeah and like this isn't Eddie Gadell he's not out there like to take a walk like he's swinging away oh yeah yeah zone contact percentage all the way yeah but like he can't golf anything you know what he mean like they've got very flat swing planes oh some one-changle problems yeah so I mean I'm assuming that given that they're batting with their head it must be small at least on the major league level you know when he ends up playing in the majors he ends up playing in the majors at the end of the film in the very strange epilogue but I just feel like that had to contribute to him being an on-base machine because he obviously has no power and I do appreciate that the film actually doesn't try to suggest that he can hit fingers mm-hmm but it does yes it's hard to it's hard to

39:16imagine on honestly that he could do much more than a swinging butt I completely agree with that just a couple of quick ones that I'm gonna rattle off here I question the accuracy Andrea when she's trying out for baseball swings the bat and throws it so hard that it gets stuck in the chain link fence and becomes sort of like ex caliber in the stone I mean I think that's a one in a million shot that probably requires more strength than a sixth grader I'm not even just a sixth grade girl but just a sixth grader can muster that feels like a physics accuracy is baseball accuracy kind of a problem yeah yeah I um additionally think that maybe this isn't an accuracy thing but but he's batting helmet um the ear guards shouldn't they cover his full ears yes I did not even notice the batting helmet until the second time that I watched the film and it is adorable but not in any way protective doesn't seem geared toward safety yeah we're gonna have

40:17a Chapman situation on our hands all over again we don't want that a couple of things related to the the roster which I find sort of I also have some roster problems yes first of all starting a game without a full roster and fielding seven players well rule 7.03b states that a game shall be forfeited to the opposing team when a team is unable or refuses to place nine players on the field this is of course a major league baseball rule things do not always work on those rules when we're talking about junior high et cetera et cetera some high school rules will allow for fewer but it seems like in the research that I did that in most cases and I would assume that is probably the case for this type of baseball that although there are instances where fewer than nine people can play the team must nevertheless start the game with a full nine fielding so to start

41:25a game with seven as happens in the final game before Tammy and Andrea and Buddy show up I call shenanigans yeah and I mean I think anybody and any softball league would also say yeah if you don't have enough players to feel the team your team forfeits as opposed to like oh you don't have a bench and we're in the middle of the game someone like pulls a hamstring and so we're just going to like play the rest of the game one person down I think that happens sometimes in various contexts in some of these like youth leagues et cetera et cetera but like not not starting a game like that yeah well my very first thought when I first saw the list of people who made the baseball team was I might even have said this out loud was that is not enough players yeah it's 10 and I get that a youth baseball team doesn't have a 25 person roster but 10 is too few like I think little league teams tend to have at least 12 and 10 is only having one bench bat or bench pitcher and obviously this lack of depth is going to go on to really hurt the trigger warnings at the end of their season

42:29yeah and this is one of those cases where accuracy issues and storytelling issues overlap because there's this whole thing between Tammy and the coach being like well I know Andrew is bad and you think that I'm good but I'm not going to play unless Andrea can play also and it seems like this like line in the sand like this like ultimatum sort of thing and then they go up to see who made the team who didn't apparently everybody made the team because the team has exactly one bench player and it is Andrea here's the thing not everybody made the team because I thought as the film went on like hey maybe there were only 10 kids at the tryouts for the trigger warnings their name is actually the timber wolves but it just says TW and the entire movie I spent the trigger warnings anyway so there certainly weren't 25 kids so on second viewing I went back and I counted and there were 13 kids sitting in the stands this is a disgrace there's no way that

43:35that school was mandating that coach Crenshaw only led in 10 kids when high school teams tend to have 14 to 20 you know yeah you could have just let everybody on the team but people on the team other people need to be on the bench and not chosen to have only one bench bat slash arm especially when that the person is Andrea and like I get that we need to have a thin bench so that a dog plays baseball but like it have a be a storytelling point in this movie in which there's few actual developments do you know like a couple of kids quit because they're mad that they have to be on team you know with girls or like they're mad that Tammy is so good or they quit because they also get on the football team or they quit because like they're in a tandem bicycle accident or they're like allergic to dogs yeah I mean you want it to be pre-dog but like yeah yeah yeah it could be an interesting development instead of just making her break the hearts of three perfectly capable young people unnecessarily like this is a shame yeah even just have other people there like

44:41like it's so funny they have these weird moments of this young like boy pitcher who's on the team who's like the pitcher until Andrea like has that one practice and then steps back in they're like he's like holding his like it looks like he's like a couple of starts away from needing Tommy John surgery the way that he's like aching in his last couple of starts well maybe they there should have been more than one pitcher on the team right yes yeah I mean it also didn't make any sense to me that like that kids elbow was kind of hurting that one time and then he was just not on the team forever right right I mean that's more of a storytelling issue than a baseball accuracy issue but yes that suddenly elbow hurts once no longer on the team we're gonna have to replace you with a dog yeah I do as long as we're on the subject of the pitcher kid I believe his name is Randy the the sequence where Tammy gets injured so the storytelling is clearly that Randy the

45:46pitcher kid is the villain here Randy but I am here to posit that Tammy wasn't necessarily in the right so what do we see happen the batter takes the fastball for a called strike two and then Tammy calls for the fastball again Randy disagrees Tammy insists again on a fastball but here's the thing I don't agree with her so batters are way more likely to swing in a two strike count than in a one strike count so the kid is probably swinging this time sure and if the kid swings and you're pumping a fastball down the middle he might hit it like it's not like Randy has overpowering stuff and Randy knows that and now I can see the argument that maybe he's laying off the fastball and looking for a breaking ball so you don't want to give him a breaking ball but if you throw a breaking ball out of the zone maybe you get him to swing and not do any damage like that's the pitch you want to throw there if you lays off of it recalculate but it should have been a breaking

46:47ball and it's on Tammy for not agreeing to get on the same page as her pitcher and therefore not expecting a ball so low in the zone oh Tammy yeah I mean it's one of a couple of questionable choices that Tammy makes but don't get me wrong Tammy's a star Tammy's an absolute star but Randy is not necessarily the villain in that situation yeah yeah and it's easy to sort of take Tammy's side you know getting those headlines doing lots of daring do on you know both sides of the game doing one of those like League of Their Own splits to catch a ball in the first game and it's fantastic and slugging away and switch hitting mid at bat my goodness and I feel like this is a question that has been wrangled with before but not necessarily maybe on this podcast but long story short yes it can be done if you're a switch hitter you absolutely can switch around

47:49sides in the middle of an at bat the only thing is that it has to be between pitches i.e. if the pitcher is ready to throw the ball and you're in the batter's box it's a no go bro until the next pitch or you know unless you call for time the thing is you don't really see it that much because one it's not like there's a ton of switch hitters out there and also because like the switch hitters that there are hit on the side that they think that is most favorable given the matchup that they have against the pitcher so it's not like they're gonna be like hmm what if I just try the next couple of pitches in the way that is less favorable to me getting a hit and so you don't really see it but it is technically legal it's legal but this is exactly the problem that I have with this this is one of the things that I owe this is more hot doggan yes yes exactly why do we only learn that Tammy is a switch hitter in the very last game of the season yeah this is some like I'm not

48:50left handed crap yeah especially since I assume that the majority of the pitching that they're seeing at the junior high level is right handed and it would have been super convenient to have her bat lefty before this like she just simply threw away almost an entire season of a platoon advantage uh and the movie also glosses over the fact that she was able to drive the ball to left field as a left handed batter astonishing I mean she is a superstar but just you know her judgment is not always infallible very fair very very fair I would be remiss not to mention that although lacking an airbud the year of this film's release 2002 did see the first championship in Anaheim a movie correctly prophesized that the Anaheim Angels would win the 2002 World Series yeah yeah a seven game series of battling wild card teams between the old halos and the San Francisco Giants with the Angels winning it under the leadership of Springfield nuclear power plant technician

49:53Mike Socia and the Giants lost despite the efforts of a Mr Dusty Baker and Barry bonds and Barry bonds and Barry bonds too but you know Dusty Baker is in the headlines more lately than Barry bonds is who actually debatable debatable yeah nevermind nevermind and you know champagne and white stetsons were raised for Jean Autry who had passed away four years prior and boy oh boy he tried to get that championship but did not live to see it unfortunately but airbus yeah yeah I mean they really steamrolled their way over the Yankees the three games to one and then the twins four games to one and you know the Giants was a was a more extended series so it delights me that this you know movie correctly prophesized this the only problem is that this is some serious Troy Gloss a ratio who won the World Series MVP in 2002 it's true he hit two homers in the first game of the series another in game four and an important RBI double in game six for the tying and go ahead

50:56runs in the eight he had ten hits and eight RBI hmm and it's also some Scott Spezio a ratio who was the first basement for the angels that year yeah and was instrumental in their world series victories he had eight RBI and a homer in that series and like are you telling me that airbud was better than both of these guys man oh man I also want to give shout outs to Darren Urstad David X-Dine and Garrett Anderson who all had over five war seasons that year but must have been airbud with his perfectly flat speaking plane not even playing a premium defensive position that was better than all of them there are also like there are other oh my god with a movie like this so many things we could talk about in this in this category like in that final out in the world series the person swinging is jersey number 30 at the at bat but when they cross first base it's suddenly number 22 like little like continuity things like that like a bound the other one that I

51:57really liked is in the very first game buddy sort of helps with a double play and the ball appears to be caught by like the second basement it's like somewhere else in the infield and then throws to first but buddy is very clearly catching a ball that was like thrown from home before he liked tags of the base so like the geography is very very tenuous in more than one spot yes in terms of you know like we puffed up the amount of baseball score a little bit but there are problems in the display of it nonetheless yeah I mean there's in that very first tryout there's that moment when Tammy tags out that kid in the scrimmage part of the tryout but he just slides way early like he was never actually making it to home plate yeah another sort of like geography problem uh obviously it is ridiculous that Andrea raced all the way into the infield dirt in order to catch that pop

53:02fly this is when she's first put into the game oh yeah Tammy hurts herself however it is generally the outfielders ball and not the infielders ball and you know who's ball it really really really isn't the pictures yeah it's true like where's the second basement on this play and moreover you only have one out to go why did coach krenshaw put Andrea into right field with a lefty at the plate like obviously if you're just gonna try to get this one player out you put her in left I like assuming that this is middle school hitter and not likely to have a lot of opposite field drive this is not all on Andrea it's also a real indictment on coach krenshaw's practice that she either wasn't practicing with Andrea and giving her pointers or that her practice was so ineffectual that a dog with a pitching machine was better I just yeah this worked yeah this movie just gives me oil boy does that work some real some real questions I mean actually on that particular topic like

54:08there's no way that airbud could feed that many balls into a pitching machine like yeah unless airbud is able to fit seven baseballs in his mouth at a time like he's like the johnny bench of dogs yeah also just like dog accuracy a dog with all those balls is gonna be like throw the ball chase me while I've got the ball like it's not gonna like that I feel like this movie fundamentally a miss represents and does not understand a dog's relationship to a ball I agree standing at first base watching a pitch to the batter buddy is gonna run to home to try to catch that ball every single time guaranteed I mean I think that yes this movie does not accurately portray dogs I think that thank you for finally saying that that's I think it's unquestionable right dogs yeah besides this one dog like cannot play multiple different organized sports yeah just they can't

55:14however on the subject of this dog playing baseball a dog sliding it's absolutely wonderful but it isn't really advantage them in the same way that it advantages a human because like the long part of their body is already long when they're running so like that's true dogs should just keep running through the bag that's how I'm gonna optimize my money ball team full of dogs yeah this isn't like when mr ed slides yes it's not one of the great cinematic achievements of the 20th century something that occurred to me though was is it possible that the team partly excels with buddy at first base not because of buddy's play specifically but because of his slobber transferring to the ball when his team's picture is on the mound oh is this a backdoor spit ball yeah yeah yeah this be ruled as an illegal substance in 2022 I don't know and and like that's the best theory

56:18that I personally have I like this yeah for why he was named the MVP of the world series is that actually like Jared Washburn and Ramon Ortiz and John Lackie were all just like really helped out by the slobber on that ball this is the best theory that I've heard yet about air but in his baseball success thanks yeah I appreciate that you know I'm really just I'm trying to look at the game from all different angles and on that particular point my last note is they're playing baseball in the fall in this movie I don't think it bears more discussion but that's not how it works it's not how it works school calendar you're not you're not familiar with the Washington state junior high fall league yeah no no no so where we at with this so this is very this is very tough but I think in between a 30 and a 40 and I had a lot of quibbles but I'm gonna go 40 for two

57:20reasons okay a lot of the problems were sort of pretty fine points or were essentially unavoidable in creating a movie in which a dog plays baseball which gets a pass okay and I think that the creators of this film had a much better understanding of baseball than do many others in other films yeah okay like ed for example yeah okay so I really it's a 35 but like I'm gonna go 40 it's the holidays I hear you and I think that's very generous and um smart and well put and I think for me I am gonna go with a 30 because come on a dog playing baseball come on um you know I know it's the fundamental premise etc etc etc uh yeah I don't know I just I didn't want to give it a 30 so much as I couldn't give it a 40 I hear you I hear you yeah it's just it's just when I but I

58:21but I get I get what you said I understand yeah you know rules or rules about giving the central promise a pass and I think they did a decent job of surrounding it with with some other problems granted but I feel sort of like arguing about Tammy calling a fastball is not as obvious as David Mickey Evans complete misunderstanding about the entirety of the game just for example Jimmy Johns is bringing big Greek energy and your taste buds are about to feel it meet the new Greek and chicken heroes back with juicy season meets and cool crisp veggies all wrapped in warm soft beta were crave worthy bite feeling classic go Greek want to mix it up try the chicken hero either way your lunch just leveled up order online at jimmy johns.com or on the app today oh that's good and participating locations for a limited time while supplies last trademark and copyright 2026 jimmy johns franchise or spv LLC yeah yeah so our next tool is storytelling oh my goodness uh

59:24so we haven't talked about the other sort of story point in this and I'm going to go ahead and bring it up now and I neglected to bring this up in in my little synopsis is that while all of this baseball stuff is happening there is an evil scientist as well as his henchman Carlton who are trying to abduct buddy as well as buddy's children and they are looking to isolate the super sports team within the bud family and over the course of the film they kidnap the dogs and then there is an escape this is a pretty big part of the story and it makes absolutely no sense because they're trying they're doing experiments to try to isolate a gene that they think exists

1:00:25but also seem to know for certain exists they're like we need to find out if this thing that we discovered exists so that we can use it to sell to professional athletes who presumably might also have the super sports gene yeah by the way and then they kidnap all of these dogs and then they don't do anything it's like what's the end game here like what are the experiments I found it very very confusing like what the goals were and ultimately I think that this film has a lot of different aspects that being one of them where it really just kind of feels like we're fill in time another example of that is the fact that this film is full of chase sequences that seem like entirely unnecessary yes yeah so I agree that's my opening salvo there I agree with you that

1:01:28as the film develops there are many problems with the evil scientists looking for the super sports gene storyline I agree that there are many other moments that are fundamentally like was this trip really necessary however don't all the dogs have like they're related don't they all have the gene yeah why do you need to kidnap all of them yeah I had questions about whether or not the professional athletes that they would be trying to sell the super sports gene too wouldn't maybe also have the super sports gene themselves and like I had a question about why is the football dog a linebacker like shouldn't the dog obviously be a wide receiver and I like I don't even know anything about football a golden receiver I mean indeed I believe that that's the name of the film oh yeah but right off the bat I actually liked the introductory scene when I was watching it oh man okay okay I had seen none of the other films and I was sort of delighted by the implied

1:02:31existence of a super sports gene and they plus they were showing pictures of dogs which just immediately made me happy and like I thought it was a pretty good way to introduce the other dog characters if you hadn't seen the other films like me like plus I don't know if you don't like a cartoonish maniacal cackle over a slow pan of a 90 style computer operating system featuring a picture of the dog like well what are we what are we really doing here that's fair but there's something about like we need to do experiments on these dogs because we want to isolate this gene as though it's something they don't know about but have like theorized and meanwhile all around them are all of these screens that seem to suggest that the research has actually already been done like so all of these like weird little x-rays and drawings that show like where the sports gene is which is also not how genes work it's like it's not like oh the super sports gene is located in the elbow or something yeah you can't just extract it right right I found fundamentally confusing

1:03:39especially when you know there are issues of like there are issues of consent none of the bud children like agree to get researched for the yeah they're evil scientists but I also never really get the sense that the dogs are in danger right no I mean I do think that that's why you know in some ways this whole premise for me personally does like a bit of a lost right where like it sets up this thing that then isn't actually explicated or like yeah they don't end up following through with it like I'm very glad that no dogs are even fictionally harmed in this movie sure but it doesn't make sense that they just have the dogs in the cages and they're not doing anything with them you know like yeah like I feel like you'd want to see them not being harmed but them being like hooked up to little like helmets with little like nodes on their body and like wires coming out of them yeah you feel like they're gonna be okay but like they're trapped and

1:04:44there are tests being done on them but no they're just like basically engages yeah it just fundamentally doesn't make sense also the way that they do it is they they get a cheap car and they basically use their raccoon assistant whose name is rocky whose name is rocky which I didn't absorb until the second time that I saw the movie to essentially it's strange because it's like they basically wide out in the open get like a set of keys or like a shiny thing to drop all in plain view of whatever bud child we're we're discussing here and then the raccoon comes out and like pretends to sort of like make off with it and buddy is like I'm gonna take a look at this or with the buddy child to look into this and it felt a little bit like profiling to me I agree I totally agree like like it was like playing to golden retriever prejudices of like

1:05:45that raccoons got a shiny thing will he must be up to no good and and also to raccoon prejudices right that yeah raccoons are you know only interested in in a shiny object and that raccoons are you know essentially nefarious and disloyal creatures I mean there's there's a there's a little bit of a turn there and we'll we'll get there a little bit but yeah I agree it really plays into prejudices for for both of those particular species although I did really enjoy the usage of slow motion over the raccoon finding the keys yeah it just there's some good close-up reaction shots yeah I think it's like so that it will seem more sinister unless adorable but it actually just makes it seem like it's a reenactment in a sort of non-union true crime show and it made me laugh every single time yeah although I think if you wanted to make this raccoon like clearly sinister other than like you know oh it like he's a raccoon that is owned by the bad guys or like hangs out with

1:06:48the bad guys like get that raccoon a sleeveless denim jacket put a little like put a little like bandana around him give him like those like fingerless leather gloves nothing it's just a just a bear-ass raccoon and meanwhile meanwhile the scientist is wearing those gloves and it doesn't make sense it takes away his scientist cred you need a bear-ass raccoon I'm sorry we bought this film we bought this film to watch it oh my god that's really that's really good yeah it's a little unclear the raccoon's decree of complicity do you know what I mean it's true like it's sort of like is the implication that the raccoon does not know what's going on and and that it's just being played and he's like you guys keep dropping your keys you know or or that they're like rocky you

1:07:51gotta but if that's the case then why do they need to throw the these should because because clearly it seems like the dog is just chasing the raccoon which also like yeah why do you even need the keys yeah yeah but but I think it's the implication is that the raccoon is not complicit and that and that the raccoon is being tricked into getting the dog to chase him so yeah so okay okay that's why he is a bear-ass raccoon I guess you know maybe you could have a little bow tie just so that you know that he's on the up and up yeah he's doing his best he's I mean I delight in this conversation and partly it's because a great joy of this film is just getting to look at animals true because for me when we were first watching this film again I was kind of like buying into the delightful kichiness of that first scene and then the next thing that we see is a bunch of dogs they're at a dog family reunion picnic yeah like there's then we meet the dog who plays basketball

1:08:57and he has a little jersey a little basketball wristbands mm-hmm and the football dog is obviously receiver and not a linebacker and I felt a lot more calm and then there's the moment where the stepdad says leftovers and all the dogs bowl him over going for the hamburgers and the sausages and it's a lot of leftovers it's a lot of leftovers but it's their family reunion picnic so like it feels only fair like I did not at any point think about whether or not those dogs were getting spoiled and if they might develop health conditions I was just like hey those dogs are going for the sausages and air buds taking time with all of them like he looks like he's a good dad yeah yeah like I was just happy because I was looking at a bunch of dogs and at this moment in the first watching of the film I was like is it possible that I'm the target audience for this movie mm-hmm maybe I mean ultimately the answer is no because then there's the scene where Josh offers his bedroom to Andrea and she declines and this is where the movie begins to lose me like dogs

1:09:58professional athletes sure evil scientist sure a sports gene that can somehow be isolated sure but a brother offering his room to his sister and then his sister declining like this has never happened in the history of brothers and sisters I don't buy it no yeah I think I love that the that you were like is is this the perfect film like up till that moment well I mean not the perfect film but just like am I the audience for this right right is this am I the perfect audience for this movie yeah I mean you know just like where my brain is when I'm looking at dogs like I don't need a lot more to be entertained I'm a little confused by the dog names because some of the dog names seem like you are destined to be the soccer dog yeah striker yeah but then like shooter but then like there are a couple of dogs that have like like isn't one of them just named like Zach yeah yeah they clearly when that dog was born they were like this dog might work in IT yeah like does that like

1:11:03expressing doubts yeah the abilities of that particular dog I mean although there's so many Zachs who are baseball players that really that's true but he the Zach doesn't even end up playing I did sort of enjoy storytelling wise and this is in a silly way that like the storytelling in some ways doesn't make any sense but I sort of like I appreciated that these uh members of the bud family are just kind of neighborhood guys you know like like shooters just like always play in the pickup game with the with the fellas in the park and strikers just like always hanging outside the barbershop like there was just something that I found like sort of sweet about that that I mostly enjoyed even though when shooter who is seems to be the star player of these pickup games goes missing it is very confusing because it seems like everybody's like shooters the best oh we're all playing this game another instance where there's not like a lot of bench players and then

1:12:03time goes by before they realize that shooter is gone I don't I don't understand this at all okay this is this is a huge problem that I have with this movie overall is that group of humans number one and shooter condemned to literally always be playing basketball at any hour of the day like on the one hand do they have jobs and on the other hand is playing basketball from son up to sundown better than having a job like that would get very tiring they're out there playing basketball when Andrea is going to school already that's gotta be early like yeah like and then and then how is it that literally no one on the basketball team notices a car drive up a raccoon come out and then shooter run over to the raccoon who's a member of one of the teams of the game that they're currently in the middle of them playing basketball and no one notices and they just keep playing basketball like here's the other thing if you haven't seen this movie

1:13:05they're playing three on three don't need to have more awareness of where your teammates are like these shooters teams passing game just that bad and like how can that be when shooter can only pass or shoot but can't even dribble like their passing game has to be good so for me literally the only explanation can be is that it is some sort of weird dondesk hell on earth in which they're not allowed to leave the basketball court or do anything else and like the series corroborated by the fact that when they cannot find shooter they only stray as far as the sidelines but no further nobody leaves basketball court I just have to assume like otherwise they'll like turn into dust like moon like Graham or something right so the I'm getting yeah real field of dreams mixed with like Dante or hell razor or something kind of players in the field of dreams come

1:14:10from out of the corn so until Kevin Costner built the field in Iowa all of those players from the blacksocks were forced to play basketball with air but with shooter yes this is my theory this is absolutely my theory oh my god this is amazing yeah like and I have to conclude that shooters owner is condemned to never leave the basketball court because it seems like he can't go looking for him like buddy passes by and he's just like hey have you seen shooter like when Mabel which also is a great question to ask a dog like what's buddy good to do to say yeah yeah like when Mabel was missing Eric and I went tramping through people's lawns and like putting up signs from sun up to sundown for days we called out from work we were not playing basketball yeah asking passing dogs if they had seen our dog we were not well we were not well we were not okay

1:15:11oh gosh yeah no and you're right it's it's handled in a completely baffling way not to mention that is it shooter that that goes first I think it is right yes yes that gets abducted first because this is also happening around the time the the kidnappings really kind of start to come into play once the baseball part of the movie is underway those first like 20 25 minutes of the movie are are really about like Andrea feeling sad that Josh has gone and like trying to find a place in this junior high environment and they and they go to various tryouts and classes which is in itself a hilarious montage because trying out for junior high band trying out for junior high gymnastics is essentially in this movie an audition where they're like show us what you got right like it's like a final callback for a professional gig like we're gonna like auditioning for the band

1:16:17is basically it reminded me of like the end of whiplash where it's like oh no we're actually playing this other thing and I guess you're gonna fumble except in whiplash you know like he actually overcomes it this is like the opposite of that yeah I mean I was sad for that school where band and homeic are after school activities like if the to me those classes are one of the only ways to survive the school day yeah yeah but they not like it seems it would do much good for Andrea but they run this like very cruel extra curricular gauntlet and then as the baseball park goes underway where Tammy's the star and Andrea's like they're cheering on the sidelines but getting like increasingly like bored and frustrated that is when shooter like when that first starts that's when shooter gets abducted and then we see a game and a headline and a game and a headline and a game and a headline and then Andrea is like at like the snack bar of the ballpark or something like that

1:17:22and sees a sign that's like shooters missing and I was like that seems like a lot of time to have passed before she's even heard about this it's a horrendous timeline problem yeah like not just the sort of spinning newspapers featuring Tammy's exploits but also what the announcer says implies that these are all different games presumably over a span of weeks for a junior high team yeah while Andrea is riding the pine the junior high season isn't 162 games right yeah it's not every day and like Andrea apparently doesn't notice any of these things for weeks like this is buddies flesh and blood yeah did shooters own or not coordinate with the frames and this is like not a big city that they're in right yeah so I mean the lack of concern for missing dogs is a real problem for me in the movie in general like how is it that after this happens mr. fusilli doesn't

1:18:29tie up his dog when a dog is missing yeah why is no one really concerned about shooter I feel like this movie legitimately suffers from a sort of combining other stakes with baseball stakes problem like why am I supposed to care about Andrea getting caught in a rundown or coming up short on the slide when there are two dogs missing and I mean this this this really comes to a head at the end of the film but you know maybe we'll get there in a little bit in the midst of all of this also the whole joke of like the like sheriff is that he's just like an old guy who is sort of like sleepy and I don't know I guess ineffectual it's not like trying to make a statement about it but like they keep cutting him and they're always yeah there are moments of I mean I think that this character is a character in more than one film in the series but otherwise his presence isn't even really justified because wait correct me if I'm wrong is there even a moment where like the

1:19:34kidnapping scientist and henchman do they see justice do they get arrested yes they do I'm just I like I don't even remember they do because there's the moment where they go into sort of like the pig muck at the oh that's right that's like chase number four yes yes and the sheriff for second I was like how does the sheriff even know that it's then the sheriff has gone to their trailer and then back out onto the town to look for them and sort of rides up and chuckles over them as they're covered in mud like I caught you to and the reason that he knows is because he's at the barber shop and he sees them go past and Andrea and Tammy are chasing them yelling like you have my dog or something like that that's how we puts it together and if you ask me I don't think that

1:20:36those guys are going to see a lot of time I just don't I just don't know that the evidence is going to be there yeah but he really doesn't do anything besides put up signs like he does not try to get to the bottom of it or anything no he just continues to let these dog nappers run wantonly about town on his watch yeah and the sheriff is definitely like he's played by like an older actor it's the guy who for people who've seen old school the guy who plays blue who's the character that like welfare all gets sort of like sort of like a strange like connection to and he's like you're my boy blue like that actor who plays that but like that's the guy who plays the sheriff so it's kind of like a similar look at this old person in this job who is presumably like past his expiration date in that position but it's a small town and so like what do we have to worry about kind of vibe yeah I mean I think you're forgiven for forgetting about that moment because

1:21:36I'm just like deeply disappointed by the fact that right after the scientists have taken a gigantic splash into the pool of mud which also doesn't make sense because they drive straight it like it looked like straight into they had time to either turn or slow down but it's like but here's the big moment it's just you know it's delightful like kids film retribution and the girls first response is oh no the game like there's no other you don't need a lot but like it's just absolutely terrible writing you can make it more believable by having one of them be like you know quick now let's get out of there or like they got what they deserved and then the other one is like we should try to make it back to the game yeah and then they're like oh no the game but just like immediately saying oh no the game I was like oh gosh yeah no like put a little button on the thing that just happened yeah like yeah like acknowledge two additional lines to make it not completely stupid acknowledge that you a junior high kid just busted a bunch of dogs out from

1:22:45an evil scientist experiment and then eluded their chasing of you where they like failed in spectacular fashion like maybe that's kind of the sort of thing that doesn't happen to a little kid that often yeah all the time and it feels like that's the kind of moment that you could use a little bit more of as long as I I feel like you made the really excellent point that this movie was just trying to fill time a lot I think that's part of it because I felt that way very strongly with the whole early sequence in which Andrea's hiding in the hamper I mean like at first I thought it was like I was like is that the washing machine but I think it was the hamper oh I thought it was the washing machine I just feel like I maybe it was the washing machine that just doesn't feel like a place where a full person actually fits yeah I don't know but anyway she hides and like if you're going to miss someone why not try to be with them for as long as possible why hide only

1:23:48to be upset when you see the car pulling away and then you're like I didn't get to say goodbye like it's someone else's fault that you didn't get to do that and then you have your first of many contrived chase sequences yeah exactly which is it's just stupid and pointless and then you have this very long sort of heartfelt scene while the bus is stopped on the side of the road and I was like that's a very tolerant bus full of people yeah let them have this whole tearful conversation a bus that stopped because buddy ran in front of it so buddy risking his own life and the lives of all of the people on that bus so that Andrea can say the goodbye that she was like not entirely sure about but could have very easily done well well well before this and then after the goodbye happens we pan back to the bus and not only is nobody mad everybody's like pressed up against the glass like these frickin like emotion purves like ogling the emotional goodbye of these two siblings

1:24:50it was very strange it is strange but I assumed that it was because they were getting a look at air budge the local celebrity yeah maybe I don't know for a limited time get one of these jimmy john sandwiches jimmy chips and a drink for only eight dollars and 99 cents choose the fan favorite turkey tom with all natural turkey or the pepe with smoked ham and provolone the eight ninety nine meal deal at jimmy johns oh that's good limited time at participating locations valid on turkey tom and the pepe eight inch only includes chips and regular fountain beds up charges apply on bottle beds premium sides and desserts not valid with other offers tax add-ons extra but you know Andrea's stupidity is a real stumbling block in this movie for me generally yeah like here's the point where the movie really loses me Andrea forgets her backpack her whole backpack if you've been carrying your backpack to your school your whole life you're going to notice that it's weight is missing like perhaps the issue here is that Andrea rarely seems to have

1:25:52anything in her backpack besides a t-shirt but even if you're a ninkam poop maybe your friend Tammy would be like oh did you want any school supplies for this all important first day of junior high and dude you're gonna do it on the first day of school when you've been so worried about junior I don't know the other thing about this that just like gets me is that this is the second meaningless chase sequence that we have of buddy getting the backpack and trying to get it to Andrea in time that one is especially strange because it has buddy stopping by the the courts and seeing shooter and everyone's like hey buddy show us some of your moves and even though we're in the middle of a chase sequence but he's like okay and then stops and plays some basketball and then commences going to return the backpack to Andrea this whole sequence happens shortly after the like racing to catch the bus to say goodbye sequence so in the first like 10 15 minutes of the

1:26:54film we have two chase sequences neither of which is necessary at all or interesting or interesting yeah like not actually full of true suspense you know it wasn't that seen though where I was like oh it's obvious that buddy is recognizable around town because he's the only golden retriever who doesn't wear clothes bear ass yeah it seems like it would be pretty easy to be a buddy imitator in this particular case one of the other dogs are just like take off their clothes and they're gonna be like hey buddy anyway it's stupid because it would be so easy to solve this why would you forget your backpack problem by her just forgetting her lunch and you could still get buddy following them and like the very pleasing tick tick tick of his nails as he parkhors along the rooftop but without it just making them be such idiots well that made me nervous buddy climbing up and down the house I did worry about his joints yeah that seemed rough yeah to me

1:27:56are you ff rough why aren't Andrea and Tammy excited to see buddy at the lunchroom this is baffling especially because it seems like they're in the cafeteria their first day of junior high they're like nervous um and yet buddy is a local celebrity yeah and she is a part of the buddy family the put the buddy I mean I should say the buddy's a part of her family but like let's be real here she's a part of buddy's family and wouldn't they want the cachet that that brings totally yeah whomesoever is in buddy's family is gonna make a lot of friends yeah like look anybody with a dog even if the dog is not a celebrity in a middle school is gonna make a lot of friends because a dog is an oasis of good cheer in a desert of cruelty yeah and everyone wants to say hi to the dog and you will become cool by association even if this dog does not play

1:28:56four different sports I don't get this and yeah that was very confusing me too here's the bigger problem I feel like I've been dancing around this a little bit everybody has proved his excellence at how many sports and Andrea never thinks that he might be able to help her practice for the baseball tryouts hmm and she never thinks that he might be able to help her practice earlier like this is a fundamental storytelling problem yeah no one in the family or or Tammy nobody thinks that buddy might be able to help her practice when buddy is out here like snagging balls left and right and if this were the first movie maybe but he's so good at sports that scientists are hunting him and nobody simultaneously thinks you know who could maybe help buddy I yeah it's a vast problem of this movie yeah and I don't know there there were a lot of little things and I was like what what is what's going on there's like a moment where they're having like a family dinner and

1:29:58it's like ribs and corn and potatoes and on the table there's like catch up and Parmesan and ranch dressing and I was like I did see that there's like a little salad so the ranch dressing I guess gets passed but I was like it felt like they were like yeah these are human condiments to put on a table but it was like why do you need ketchup and Parmesan for like ribs and potatoes and like you could put Parmesan on anything okay okay I would put Parmesan on any of those food items I thought I had a hard time imagining walking away from corn which is like I'm gonna I'm not very hungry and I guess the implication is that she goes straight to bed and I was like there was corn you left corn on that table are you kidding me yeah I don't know why like Andrea's like hiding from her brother in the hamper or the washer which at first I thought was unbelievable until I remembered the time that we played hide and seek at my parents house and I looked in the closet for

1:31:04you and you were just hiding deeper in the closet because you were using our nieces as a sort of like decoy clever girl that was really really that was really really good but like I guess I'm I guess I'm I'm thinking about Andrea's like gullibility in terms of like she hides okay oh wait Josh is leaving okay great wait all of a sudden buddy wants to take me somewhere this is a mystery where buddy would want like she's so gullible when it comes to like obviously buddy is gonna try to make that reunion happen and that goodbye happen where else is buddy rushing her off to at this particular moment come on Andrea yeah yeah but I mean given everything else that she does in this movie it tracks right she does not realize that they're doing something to Josh's room until

1:32:04there are like full on renovations in that room it's true until like the crib has been moved and stuff has been painted but like I mean let's really get to the heart of the issue here why the fork is the crib and the changing table there in the room after it's been painted just covered in plastic why isn't it just wherever it was before and once the room is all painted and ready to go then you bring the baby stuff in it's not like we're expecting the baby any day the baby is freaking here the babies there this should have been sorted out well in advance yeah they would have been waiting to use that crib until the paint is dry that transition into a baby room would have been established and underway like I feel like that decision would have been made before the events of this movie yes I mean especially when you learn in that scene with the mom that she says by putting the baby in Josh's old room quote this way the baby can be closer to us wherever they

1:33:07keeping the baby babies out in the garage basement no wonder the baby is always crying every scene it's a real issue storytelling wise that reminds me there are definitely a couple of moments where family film sound effects are definitely like family film sound effects gone wild and the two that just immediately come to mind I don't even know that I really have much in the way of notes about this are that when I think it's when Andrea first like knows that she's on the team and she comes in and is like mom mom or whatever like it turns out that that was like oh that we had just gotten the baby down but like her just being like mom or whatever it is that she says there is like breaking glass sound as though she were doing the like you know opera singer hitting the note that breaks the crystal kind of thing which I think is so like misplaced it's like again I know that

1:34:12there are human jokes that relate to sound and a glass of some sort breaking so let's put one of these in here another is one of the first moments I think the first moment that buddy catches a baseball it's because the baby like throws it and buddy catches it and you hear and you hear the mom go whoa but it's not clear that it's buddy catching the ball which first of all should you really be that surprised that your dog who has already mastered three sports can catch a ball yeah and dogs who cannot play other sports can also catch balls and this is undermined by the fact that when the baby tosses the ball there is very unexpectedly for me a whoosh sound where I'm like is the point of this that this baby's got like a hell of an arm on it or or what what is the wow

1:35:12about is the mom not even paying attention to buddy and is just like who looks like it runs in the family or like whatever I don't know yeah I mean it must be that because he's in buddy's family he has that super sports gene I think so yeah why don't they get the super sports gene from like Joe Montana or like Michael Jordan why do the evil scientists be like we've tracked down this family of dogs because presumably they think whether or not they're going to be easier did it would be easier yeah easier that you're not going to get Joe Montana to like chase a raccoon into the back of your trunk I mean you might right but it'd be easier to get a dog to do it I love imagining that it's the same strategy of course it's the same strategy it's clearly the only play that they have yeah yeah and I mean also yes whether or not they are right that more people would notice that Joe Montana was missing you know what I mean what are the experiments that they're

1:36:15even going to do it's just so I mean I know it's like a kids movie and and this is kids movie stuff I mean it could be that they look they were like the people in this town are incompetent the smartest it's clearly a lawless community with the sheriff that they have yeah yeah I mean not like not on paper a lawless community but like this sheriff is not going to do anything he's just going to put up a bunch of signs we're going to be able to get away with this yeah you know what I mean but like yeah because they were targeting Barry bonds at the time people would have taken notice and not just like put up signs being like have you seen Barry bonds yeah because they haven't even they don't really seem to have much of a plan I mean they talk about these experiments that they're going to do and who knows if the images that they have in their like Winnebago or whatever are actual images representative of research that they've done or just like clip art that they pulled off of the early 2000s internet or whatever I mean the movie Microsoft word included in Microsoft

1:37:15yeah yeah it's like there's like dog x-rays and genetic stuff and then there's like clippy yeah yes exactly what I was thinking of and the movie starts with them finding a spot at the trailer park and being like oh we got one like this is you know obviously in and of itself which I guess is good family film storytelling to be like they're the bad guys but they're not so bright I don't know I just found it exhausting though it really is and I feel like it's you know this is what I was leading to earlier it's more and more of a problem as the movie goes along so I understand if the town has essentially become numb to dognapping given its horrific prevalence or maybe that they're just too stupid to put it together that these dogs might all be disappearing for a related reason and that you can do something other than be like my dog is missing that they're that they're

1:38:17like concrete actions you might be able to take even like pay attention to the other dogs in this family yeah yeah like yeah even don't leave your dog outside yeah not on a leash but now this cavalier attitude extends King Charles cavalier attitude yes this King Charles cavalier attitude yes very very fancy little paws that look like spats extends to two young girls who are also missing like given that the fact that just putting up signs about the dogs being missing has yielded exactly zero dogs how can everyone continue to be so careless like whether or not the rules of baseball are that you can play with players down like how can everybody just be like oh three more beings are missing you're just gonna be shorthanded on the field rather than like everybody stop what they're doing and figure out why two children and four dogs are gone like the coaches only

1:39:24worried about the game how did she get this job without caring about either improving the skills of young people or their overall health and safety yeah but it's not just her like the mom is also like she knew when the game started I can't imagine she'd forget that's right mom it is search party time runs like we gotta beat the baboon right like it's it's baboons by the way terrific antagonist team name absolutely terrific antagonist team name yes 80 grade but it's trying to build tension by cutting back and forth between like the losing baseball game to the girls being chased by the crazy scientist and it's just like no this doesn't make sense from a realistic perspective and it also doesn't make sense from a sort of stakes cinematic storytelling perspective because the stakes are not equivalent here yeah yeah and all of this while the movie heads to its conclusion except then tax on and like we have to address it a little bit more oh yeah the baffling

1:40:31choice to have the movie then end with as an afterthought buddy sometime after the championship game with the baboons gets drafted by the angels who then go on to win the world series of which buddy is the MVP and they're just like oh by the way and also this happens yeah like that that sort of how it plays out yes it's amazing it's such a crazy crazy unbelievable decision it feels like it would be a joke in another movie that there is a movie that does this yes well particularly because for me not knowing anything about this movie not having seen any of the other airbud films what I thought this movie was going to be is there's a dog on a baseball team yes that is not what this movie ends up being so like the first time we watch this I took the note that I'm going to read verbatim I thought this would be more like ed with a dog and it's weird to say that I'm

1:41:33disappointed but that kind of sums it up oh yeah that the movie that I thought I was going to watch was the movie that took place in between the like nine months later scene which I have more to say about in one second and the scene where he wins MVP I'm like oh I thought that was going to be the movie that we were going to see and taking I think that this is the first one that takes it to like professional sports levels oh really because I think my assumption was that the other airbud movies were also about like airbud I think that they're about like big spots in like the local like kids games like I think in the very first airbud he comes in in as like a sort of like last minute substitution and like helps out a little bit he actually gets injured in golden receiver and I think is maybe I think that's one where like Josh is like the person who makes the big play potentially and like airbud is out but like helped like get it to that point whatever

1:42:34I could be misremembering did you donate them two dollars yeah I will I definitely will now but like it raises all kinds of questions because if you're like sure a dog bouncing a ball around for a couple of like sequences in a basketball game okay but like I have not attempted to like play basketball in an effort to get better at basketball since I was in like the sixth grade I feel like if I'm playing one-on-one with airbud I could probably smoke him like I think that I have a lot of like hype advantages etc etc I feel like pretty confident in my abilities he cannot dribble and like to play baseball it's always one thing but then to be like he's so elite that he actually becomes a world series MVP shortly after this no big deal like is so so brazenly outside of any kind of logical reality that I don't know whether

1:43:42to be impressed by it or you know the clear opposite yeah yeah I completely agree with you that it's disappointing because it doesn't make sense and it's also disappointing because for me personally that's the movie that I wanted to watch the whole time instead of this whole nonsense with Andrea hiding in a look if you're gonna have him be in the big leagues having me in the big leagues like a lot sooner than 90 seconds before the movie ends yeah I'm also very confused by the whole nine months later timeline that's what it says we get a little oh yeah high-ron that says nine months later Andrea's at home playing with her baby brother and it's clearly a call from the angels to have buddy come and play with them but presumably the end of their weird fall baseball season is like late October or early November even though it's clearly summer for the entire movie so nine months later is it July or the angels like we need to

1:44:45you know make a free agent acquisition before the trade deadline or is this an alternate universe waiver wire must have been real thing that year or is this an alternate universe where the middle school starts in June in which case there's August playoffs but then they'd be calling for buddy in May or have we seen an entire school year pass in a weird season list Southern California town in which case the implication is that those dogs were in cages for like six to eight months before they were ever founded that is oh god like that is not well it's not exactly that because it is Washington state well I mean but like if the championship game were in May or early June then it would make sense that the angels were calling in February for spring training but then that just really creates a whole host of other issues yeah like I can't have those dogs even fictionly be in cages for that long it's not yeah like nine months what also like this is the again what the fourth of the movies I believe so buddies but he's not a young dog at this point and how much of an

1:45:52MLB how much of an MLB career is buddy gonna have and even if it were several seasons of the most immaculate baseball ever but he probably would not be alive even as like a first round hall of famer inductee because yeah anyway yeah but I mean I also don't think I think that then you get into the real question of how high was buddy's peak even when it was very good because there's no way that he had like a long career of sustained excellence buddy is not a massing the amount of war that he needs to get into the hall of fame by Jay jaffy's jaw system like it's just not gonna happen no no no but he'll be one of those people that's like like Bo Jackson when you're like yeah but like look at those few years where like he was just like the like oh look at those skills sustained excellence yeah exactly yeah argument for sure it's strange to me that you have not

1:46:53mentioned one of your least favorite things were you saving that for another category people whispering to each other from across long distances where they absolutely would not be able to hear each other oh yeah that happens in this movie I mean it's just like small fry and comparison I think it was yeah all right so I don't know I had a 30 for storytelling there's a part of me that weirdly wants to go 40 after this but the more I think about those scientists I think it's a 30 I think I think I think it's gotta be a 30 yeah it's not just the scientists it's like the complete mismatching of oh yeah it's all the other stuff it's it's everything it's riddled with storytelling problems 30 our next tool is the score tool score tool yeah this one needs a double bootedly do the score is fine score is fine it's like a turn of the century

1:48:00kids movie score that suits the action to the word uh brawm wenger composed the score who did the same for it looks like all of the other airbud movies and many other young adult movies and it's like the john Williams of the e a b c u yes so I mean I don't even really remember it which is I think normally a plus so here's what I would like to discuss the song while airbud is finally practicing with Andrea the refrain of this song is like hey I'm ready to play hey team when you put me in the game and it seems sort of like someone said write me something that's like centerfield but not centerfield and it is as terrible as anything with that kind of an initial inspiration would be it to me has

1:49:18like very much a centerfield vibe 100% with with a not insignificant percentage thrown in of like Amy polar making upwards to we didn't start the fire that's in parks and red yes yes like it feels a little bit like off the top of the head it's very daddy in a good way yes yes it is like that's that's a great comparison my thought was that while mr. Fogarty is wrong to think that he should just get slotted into a premium defensive position these song lyrics appear to be generated by an AI machine using baseball phrases and metaphors that they heard from a Scott Boris press conference yeah consider the opening verse

1:50:22there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow ring a bell what a great day hey home run finally my ships come in it's so many different metaphors that don't have any relationship to each other it's like he's like writing the lyrics flipping the channels and there's like a lucky charm commercial and then a Taco Bell commercial we're just eating like some sort of off-brand lucky charms that also have like bells and ships in them or something so like what is happening and then we have at the crack of the bat I'll be off running slide into first base which it's generally accepted as better to run through first base rather than decide and then the very next line is I'm making them take the field for this pennant race what like who are you making take the field aren't you already on the field I thought you slotted to first base which was

1:51:25like weird flex but okay at least it tracked the perspective is so unclear also like I'm making them take the field yeah as if this is some sort of punitive action I think the AI comment that you made definitely like hit on something that is like missing from my initial assessment which is this sense of like lyrics by Bob's and Doug nut yes yes yeah because the rest of it is just sort of baseball word salad like there's a ball down the middle of the plate now here's a chance for a golden glove okay like way to say that your pitcher doesn't have their stuff I guess it's like all of the baseball portion of the athletic was like run through like word counters yes and then the biggest ones in the mosaic were just like randomly inserted into lines it's just strong energy of that yes yeah yeah so for me personally score 50 that song 30 I'm gonna go a 40 and I'm gonna

1:52:31be honest this feels a little bit generous to me I just was not charmed by the you know peculiarities of some of the things that we discussed with the song but also there was a lot of music that to me in the actual score sounded like DVD menu music this is fair like like a little muesaque I struggled with it and so I hesitate to say it's like a 30 but I would not go higher than a 40 you know I think you're right I think that the score is actually a 45 for me personally okay however I had not given like my overall score because I think that this song is a very strong presence and this so I think that my I am changing my score score to 45 to be clear

1:53:34but I think my overall score is also going to be a 40 because I think that the just insanity of this particular song it's also musically awful check leads the overall score also to a 40 who boy yeah but you're right I don't think it's a 50 I think the overall score is a 45 so what about acting you know by and large this is like kind of broad kid movie acting I don't have a ton to say beyond that many of the scenes it looks like they probably just did it in one or two takes and I get that this was one of the directive video releases I'm sure they were working on a tight schedule etc etc but it just felt really really broad mostly I thought there were some exceptions I mean like Richard Karn is a sitcom actor who will forever be associated with the role of like ow and home improvement and that's great and he was very like sweet sitcom me sidekick in that but it's like that level of acting is the very best acting

1:54:42in this film by and large like it's just like there's a low ceiling low floor yep yeah I also think Cynthia Stevenson as the mom and Molly Hagen as coach Crenshaw have some nice moments I absolutely were with that but I don't think that it's really enough to move the overall needle and there aren't any exceptional young actor performances all uh angels in the outfield either version of angels in the outfield actually no one is insufferable yeah I mean besides the umpire the umpire is insufferable but none of the young people are insufferable I'm gonna go I feel bad I think I'm also gonna go with a 40 I think some of this falls on the direction vision schedule or whatever but it just I don't know I think it just doesn't really work and it's not like if you put a different set of like your dream list of actors into this that like it suddenly everything would like work better but I also I feel like there is some room there where I think it's

1:55:46possible that literally the best actors in the world might make it a little bit better but also maybe not do you know what I mean like maybe not who but like what if like Amy Adams was Andrea I the question is are they gonna be asked to do the same thing that the actors in this film are asked to do I don't know Benicio del Toro as Josh who's playing the umpire that's really what I want to know oh the umpire oh my god the umpire is the main thing that I just absolutely cannot not stand the watching it's like it says though the actor playing the umpire is unfamiliar with baseball to the point that he has he hasn't seen baseball but he does have a memory of watching a loony tunes cartoon about baseball sometime in the past and so what he's doing is trying to remember what the guy in the cartoon did but he can't remember it super yes it's very specific

1:56:50but I think that that's kind of like it's this like very contorted idea of an umpire that is like beyond comic it like becomes like grotesque yeah it's trying way too hard to make a bit out of everything yeah you know it also just has that like a broad bit yes that that strong energy of that person I don't know if they were in your family or maybe your theater conservatory program who was trying to make a bit out of every single moment of their lives I don't even mean like moment performing like every single thing has just we've got to find some way to make it funny and the result is it is miserably unfunny when it's exhausting it's exhausting yeah it's exhausting it might be someone else's taste but it's not mine yeah so yeah that's so yeah it's a 40 so it is a

1:57:5140 yeah overall you know I do think that there were some people who maybe couldn't have done any better with the material and the time that they had everybody to 40 per like 40 actor but like what you receive in acting goodness out of this film is no greater than a 40 yeah agreed I mean the only note I actually took during the movie in this category was this the dogs do such a great job of running to their respective owners and the take where the dogs come back I know that this is a series of films where dogs do all kinds of amazing sports feats but I also appreciated the training there that they knew who their specific owner was supposed to be even though that's made up you know you know what I what I wrote this must have been filmed in Canada multiple kids who say sorry yes I also noticed yes and it was largely filmed in Vancouver it turns out yes a lot of people sorry yeah so our next tool is the delightfulness of catcher character and here

1:58:57is one tool where this movie does pretty well yeah yeah Tammy's excellence at the catcher position is very delightful now catcher delightfulness is often linked with a sort of comic delightfulness whether that's as a sort of a rye main character or a goofy ancillary character and I think Tammy isn't given a lot of wise cracking jokes that I think would have made her into even more of a catcher archetype mm-hmm but I do enjoy that she can simply be excellent she's got power she's got speed she can sure catch a pop-up whether it's like daddy hints and or not I do question her game calling abilities and why she didn't reveal that she was a switchheader earlier but she's a very good friend and a lovable team leader and then her friend turns out to be a pitcher so you've got so that relationship was there before they even knew that relationship was there it's true yeah I'm sort of between a 60 and a 70 on this one again I think they feel like a bit made sense in the bell curve I'd probably go 65 yeah but I think I'm gonna go 60 it's tough I think I'm gonna

2:00:02go 60 as well it's not an excellence of catcher tool it is a delightfulness of catcher tool yeah no I do like her but I think there is something in the way and it could even just be like being in this kind of a movie like maybe they can't I don't know like I like I wanted more depth to Tammy right yeah yeah it's true I wanted more depth but I think specifically I wanted her to have a few more little ride jokes yeah well exactly and and like there are like child and young adult versions of those like it's a it's a personality thing it's a yeah yeah I feel like they didn't besides being a good friend and a team leader they didn't really give her any other catcher personality traits yeah I'm a 60 yeah yeah what about delightfulness of an answer so the announcer is well we haven't even really mentioned him yet well because we were I personally there's so much to talk I'm gonna save it for this category oh boy okay well

2:01:05so the announcer is male man Phil who is a male man and his voice and kind of the joke of the character and I think it's a joke that's like mostly works whether or not you think it's a good joke is that he is someone who just kind of apparently his natural speaking voice is not that far away from a like very affected typical what you think of sports announcer voice and so as he's walking along his mail route that's how he talks if you bump into him at the grocery store that's how he's gonna talk to you and he announces all of the games as well and he does it in a sort of fun broad version of that that actually to show that I'm not being overly snooty when talking about that acting of a kids movie I think he actually does a pretty good job of doing like the broad

2:02:13silly thing that young kids will enjoy but like having a sort of specificity and commitment to it that makes it nonetheless like good acting I went a hundred percent agree with you yeah it's the thing where I'm like oh see that's this style working and I think it's just that it's it feels like a little bit more tethered to anything it feels like as a character he still sort of holds together and makes sense yeah like you understand why he has the perspective on things that he does it doesn't feel forced in the same way it just feels like naturally large yeah you know naturally expansive and expressive but not just buffoonish I mean I don't know I feel like buffoon is too strong of a word for the umpire it's just yeah it just has no relation to any human behavior it fits the tone and the aesthetic skillfully and also just like the premise first of all that there

2:03:14would be someone who like does live radio broadcasts of the like junior high my baseball games which was a premise that I weirdly never really questioned and I think in part it was because it was this like silly guy that we had already met before like I don't know like it it actually like functioned pretty well I think him being the male man is incredibly helpful you're like oh right this isn't how he makes his money right he's just yeah it's not like his job he's just like he's just a fan this is just something that he enjoys to do people are like you've got a good you've got a good voice and you like sports you should go over there the whatever the he's trying to work his way up to yeah he's trying to work his way up to calling the game for the high school trigger warnings yeah and I feel like if I were directing this movie the joke that I would have gone for was actually that as male man Phil he has a relatively shy and retiring voice

2:04:18you know oh yeah like have fun on on the baseball team and then you know shows up on the day with a very Brock Meyer kind of delivery I would have wanted it to be more like he has this big announcer voice when he's just like talking on the street on his mail route and then when it comes to actually doing the broadcast he's like and we've got a routine like it it becomes more like an NPR sort of voice and that his journey of learning how to just sort of like shake it out and be natural and just like talk like himself is him getting back to a place of sounding like this that's fantastic yeah I actually feel like I want to see that sketch but I think that you know it could be that they were like oh that's making the movie too much about him I would rather that the movie would have been about that than about some of the other things that the movie was about but I also felt like you know him calling the game was pretty colorful and accurate like you felt like you

2:05:21could listen in and you'd know what's going on like I liked the moment and this might seem very quotidian but where he just says and there's a line shot up the middle and that's going right to the fence folks two runs are gonna score for sure here comes the relay from centerfield oh it's not even close I just I felt both his emotion but also the accuracy of like if I weren't watching it I'd be able to know what was going on which is not something that I can say for every movie announcer there's plenty of ones where they're funny and you're just like yeah but if you were listening in you would be like what is happening right now in the game boy I'm struggling here because I I'm very prepared to give a 60 but is it crazy they consider higher than that I mean that's up to you it's your scoring oh I think I'm gonna I'm gonna go 60 I feel like there's a case to be made for 70 knowing that I'm gonna go 60 yeah I appreciate also other things that we haven't mentioned that he does a celebration dance that is only slightly more ridiculous than my own

2:06:23and I appreciate the way that he enjoys saying the word baboons yeah yeah damn it I think he's a 60 though to me between it is between a 55 and a 60 and for me for sure it's not higher than a 60 but I mean feel free to go 70 I feel like you were talking me into a 70 but no well I'm definitely gonna keep my 60 now but yeah that's just for me personally like 255 and a 60 but like as much as personally as a viewer I like I'm not necessarily a fan of that character type or that style or whatever I feel like I have to show props for a well executed version of that yes and also as a character he's smart he's invested yeah silly dance yeah yeah and and so yeah 60 so our final tool is lack of misogyny and I think that this movie thinks

2:07:27that it's an absolute anti misogyny all-timer like it's a sports movie with two young female leads playing a sport that women have historically been banned from playing at a professional level and the coach is a woman yeah however I also need to just point out that it's general attitude is that Andrea is regularly bested in the intelligence department by her family dog Andrea does not know that she'll regret not saying goodbye to Josh but buddy knows Andrea doesn't realize that she's forgotten her backpack but buddy does Andrea does not realize that buddy could help her play baseball despite the fact that he's a celebrity for sports playing and become a cool kid at school if she'd only let him help her right she does not even realize that she does not notice that they're doing full-on renovations to Josh's room until the crib is already moved in Andrea is on her hands and knees in the grass looking for a watch that should very obviously either be in

2:08:31that length of grass or not when she knows that the watch was always on her backpack and her backpack was never in the field her backpack was in the dugout and after every stupid thing that this movie has made Andrea do it makes her admire her hit that is not out of the park for so long that she almost isn't able to turn it into the little e-commerce that it really clearly should have been very easily yeah we haven't really talked about the dead dad oh I mean I know that you did a lot of really great research I did a couple of like I googled around a little bit just because well so you mentioned the watch we just hadn't talked about the watch at all I realized for people who maybe haven't seen it when Josh goes off to college he gives Andrea a watch that is like their dad's watch and we just see like the sort of military photo of the dad and Richard

2:09:32Carn is like you know the stepdad clearly and coming into this not having seen the first three airbud films I was like but like when did the dad die and I'm laughing because that was that was the screenshot that Eric shared in his tweet yeah I was like did this like this is the fourth movie like was this like a plot point I don't know what I was thinking but apparently when the airbud movie starts it is sort of immediately in the aftermath of this I see yeah yeah it was one of my immediate questions when we were first watching it was like this baby was a mistake baby right is that going to be addressed and then I was like oh it's the stepdad yeah I didn't realize that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so additionally in terms of lack of misogyny coach crunch as a woman but is she any good as a coach like apparently not she can take already talented players and put

2:10:33them on the field that she's incapable of development and why did she put Andrea in right field with a lefty at the plate you know who's better at coaching than coach Crenshaw a dog a male dog also we saw what what's that kid's name Billy Randy Randy yeah same thing said that was like I heard there's still an audition for dancers in the school play when he was like throwing a pitch and then grabbing his arm and wincing in pain and then pitched for a while longer before Crenshaw came out and was like I don't want you to hurt your arm or whatever when it had clearly been hurt for a while yeah yeah yeah I mean probably part of the problem she knew what she was doing who do we have a Ellen Adera piffety yeah he's too young to be throwing a breaking ball potentially oh so maybe that's what Tammy was doing she was like your 12 don't throw

2:11:34a breaking ball yeah oh gosh I didn't even consider that angle yeah she's like oh be good to your arm and then he hurts her arm yeah oh gosh I feel like I'm sorry Tammy obviously that's what was going on yeah and I was wrong to question you're still wrong to not let everybody know that you're switch it or the lesson to this everybody who's listening to this is that when it comes to watching air bud seven thinning fetch twice is not enough twice is not enough yeah for such a master work there's layers there's layers in this settle in I mean I do appreciate I feel like the character of Randy as an obvious sort of antagonist does have some good anti misogyny points and I feel like this movie for saw some potential misogyny issues and really tried to get out of in front of it and I think like they were definitely trying to portray actual misogyny as a bad thing and the main thing that helps is that Tammy is an absolute superstar and you know it has raised

2:12:39the question as to why if Tammy was this good at baseball why she didn't think about trying out for baseball earlier like she really let Andrea just go through all of the things that she was bad at before being like oh what you know what what if we try baseball but maybe she's just one of those crazy talented everything people and Andrew was just screaming it up for her no matter where they went it's like if they're like best friends who hang out with each other all the time how does one of them be really great at baseball and the other one is like largely unfamiliar with it Tammy explained that she played with her brother but like why didn't Andrea know that Tammy played with yeah how is this new info like Josh is certainly a you know athletic young man one would assume I mean I don't know maybe he's a complete Andrea like adult in the first three movies but yeah anyway I just don't think that this is the Hall of Famer that they think they made oh no I mean like for one thing I believe it is in one of the earlier airbud movies that air

2:13:43bud meets his baby mama right presumably there was another dog it's named like Molly or something I don't know it's like it's not it's not like a fun kids movie name it's just like a person name it's like it's like a 40 or 45 and they have puppies like that just sort of like it's like a meat cute and then cut to puppies family movie style and the thing is give a gestational timeline I think she got well that is a separate thing the thing that I wonder is I don't know I think it might be the movie right before this that that happens which makes it seem like she somehow got disappeared yeah like there's no mention and even if I'm getting for all those air bud heads those air buddies out there yeah like even if I am getting points wrong in this and I'm not sure

2:14:50that I am there is something to be said about the fact that in this movie all those kids mom not a part of their life anymore apparently because we don't learn anything about her right yeah she's not even mentioned you know what it's like what it's like Shakespeare oh we're all the moms and Shakespeare except for all as well we're all the moms yeah yeah and Romeo and Juliet I guess almost no moms in Shakespeare but yeah like I do think that it is cool that Tammy is the like stud player on the team is a cool thing and it is a movie that features baseball yeah they're not even playing softball they're playing baseball and two main characters being girls being the only girls on a team is like not nothing yeah yeah and Tammy such a superstar and then Andrea becomes the MVP by the end yeah I think it's a 70 I just think they made an 80 and I don't think it's an 80 I'll agree with the 70 for sure yeah I mean I I might even be like rounding up to that

2:15:57I am also rounding up I think it's actually a 65 but I I'm gonna round up this particular case just just because it's like what other movie besides a league of their own even has this many female protagonists in a baseball movie yeah yeah yeah sometimes you regret doing the like you know let's just do a 60 or a 70 and not the in between these yeah I know I feel it more every day yeah that's okay that concludes our scoring of this film and now we should move along to the next category yes or no would this movie be better with Kevin Costner in it yes yes I would be okay in really almost any scenario Kevin Costner could play Josh heading off to college literally any age Kevin Costner doing that and I would buy it I would think that's a really good choice and I'm a behind it I'd be okay with him playing the scientist villain I'd be okay

2:16:57with him playing Randy I'd be fine with him playing buddy but in a dog costume like oh I wouldn't that's the only place where I draw the line oh I don't know I think it'd be worth it I think it would be in that game you wouldn't get to look at a real dog as much which like that's really key for me with this movie is looking at a real dog but with Kevin it'd be maybe the better what I want is for Kevin Costner to play the umpire as if this were a dramatic baseball film I want it to have sort of like the natural level self-importance I love it that's what I love it no like sometimes I don't like or do like depending on the the circumstances uh silly answers with regards to this question but I do and and I know that I I gave a sort of silly answer here but I do like absolutely believe that if you put Kevin Costner in like any number of roles in this um it would it would

2:18:02make a better movie yes does this movie reference pay booth I don't think so I don't think so either yeah is there a dog oh yeah this movie's got a lot of dogs it's got many dogs it's one of its like main redeeming qualities indeed yeah yeah there's is there a dog is a separate question and not one of the tools but if amount of dogs was a tool this would obviously be an 80 yeah are Yankees fans the main antagonist of this film no it's like the scientist and Carlton and like if there are fan antagonists it would either be the baboons which we don't really get much of those fans or the podres in the movie that's who the angels win the world series against so like in theory it could be Padres fans because bud is winning the world series for the angels against the Padres and you know that game winning catch that we see happens in Anaheim not like fictional San Diego in the world

2:19:08series and so it's going to be an angels heavy crowd and so yeah fans are kind of hard to uh indict here I personally can only assume that the scientists were in the direct employee of George Steinbrenner feels obvious so yes is my answer yes all right all right our next segment is six degrees of baseball Jeffrey Ballard who plays the memorable role of student in airbud seventh inning fetch also appears in the 2006 Keenan ivory wands film little man as ball player you did so many clickings for that and that's what and that's what I got I appreciate you so much that that represents time in my life that I could have spent like doing almost any other thing oh my love oh well my favorite moment of the film part of me wants to say that it's

2:20:17as simple as buddy sliding into home it's a great choice it is one of my serious contenders yes but I'm gonna say that maybe it's actually the collection of sub headlines or secondary headlines in the newspaper articles so in the movie when I did no amount of pausing and when we when we go to the when we go to the baseball portion of the film when Tammy is like really like clearly like the standout star right from the beginning you know after the first game there's a newspaper headline that's just like Tammy leads t wolves to victory which is so funny in itself like it's not the last name not like local girl it's just Tammy Tammy leads t wolves to victory and like I did pause on it and like the like fake copy for the article written below it also just includes like first names

2:21:18which about so funny it's like it's like if you pause on the article it's it's like Randy was on second and then Tammy hit a dinger which I I genuinely I loved so much and there are other headlines like that that are like Tammy does it again and one that's just like timber wolves win again but like in these headlines you know it's like the top of the fold like front page big like across the banner headline but there's like always one or two headlines elsewhere in the paper and so I'm choosing for my favorite part of the movie those secondary headlines which included lottery winner declines prize community center opens tomorrow and skier returns home that's an excellent choice there was also boat collision closes marina wow that one's a little dark

2:22:19I just I don't know I got really obsessed with like the choice of what that secondary headline was going to be and to choose boat collision closes marina I just thought was so bizarre and was something that I have not been able to stop thinking about so that or buddy a sliding in a home oh really superb yeah for me I'm gonna choose the standoff between buddy and rocky the raccoon that is just close-ups of their animal faces oh yeah that's good particularly because it culminates in rocky becoming team furry four-legged creature over team like not the bad guys the scientists yeah which is my referencing a line that I actually enjoyed that was we are not the bad guys we are the scientists I like that line but yours is far superior and had I known about it I

2:23:20might have chosen that as well what about your least favorite moment I'm just gonna choose the the chase scenes the like meaningless chase scenes just because I didn't find them interesting or exciting and they take up a decent amount of time and even if you enjoy this movie I feel like you would have a better shorter version of it if you just minimize those yeah for me my least favorite moment is when the umpire says quote this game's going to the dogs it's like this movies that's what's known as trouble with the curve basically and the fact that it soon followed by tied for my least favorite moment in all of the weird things that the umpire does he says no balls two strikes and he puts his hands up and then he turns them into like little animals that kiss each other

2:24:21it's not funny it doesn't make sense it's weird and out of place even in a kids movie yeah yeah that's a weird choice it's yeah yeah no no no to either of those those are my two least favorite moments what about a scene you'd like to see well I mean the obvious choice which is like let's see how buddy parlay's being good on a junior high baseball team to becoming world series MVP like let's have the movie be about that that seems like a way more interesting story than the one that we see here I feel like the first 95% of this film that we are talking about should be the first 10 minutes of a film dealing with the pro baseball stories strong strong agree yes I mean I feel like I basically posited this exact same opinion earlier in storytelling yeah that like I

2:25:22thought this was going to be ed but with a dog and I was disappointed that this was not ed but with a dog yeah that is a stunning indictment any film I obviously 100% agree but in trying to think what is the single scene that I would like to be put into this movie as it is I would like a scene where people look for their dogs not not just a scene where they like go to the sheriff and are like hey our dog is missing I want a montage where people are you know like going around calling you shooter striker yeah like I want I just feel like there's just such a lack of concern for their dogs well this is like a little bit of well it's a little bit of a Scooby-Doo problem of is this dog like a dog or is this dog like a person in either case look for your dog right but like

2:26:23it's funny because when shooter initially is missing it isn't like um where's my dog oh my sweet baby etc etc the sort of things that you actually think when you lose your dog it was like hey is anyone seeing shooter like our friend have you seen him around or like is he taking some time to himself does he have stuff going on like there are moments in this movie where I feel like the dogs have owners but it seems like they all kind of have like studio apartments in different parts of town and like live their own separate lives yeah totally and like put on their little you know green kerchief or wristbands by themselves in the morning yeah yeah and the and the people that and eat a toothbrush exactly oh yeah I gotta have that greenie twice a day that the that the

2:27:24people that are their owners actually are just like well this is like shooters bro and like striker just like sees the dude at the barber shop is like kind of like a a mentor figure or whatever like keeping them off the streets or like what have you like I don't know there's just like there's something about the world as it's presented as we sort of go through the town and it's these dogs in freaking sports clothes like hanging out just like neighborhood guys like it kind of has this feel like they are independent to the point that if they go missing it's got a little more of a vibe of like yeah I haven't seen that dude in a while yeah but I still feel like look for that dude you know yeah no it's true yeah yeah you go back to that for sure but you know go around the area businesses with flyers and be like have you seen my friend yeah yeah I appreciate that

2:28:26choice and I think it's a good one do you uh who's the dream is this obviously Tammy oh okay I apologize if that's weird because they're children but it's Tammy it's clearly Tammy well and maybe this is just like the thing of of me as a 40 year old man choosing this I wrote I feel like buddy is the correct choice especially when the alternative is to call a junior high kid dreamy but I don't know I mean like buddy is the like he's lettered in four sports at this point yeah that's fair I become world series MVP yeah it's true it's true but like there's part of me yeah buddy is also I think and he was the hard of that team I just uh maybe Tammy was like I don't know I think it's that I still I get bogged down in all of my logistical considerations about how a dog is actually gonna play baseball like he doesn't have any power you know Tammy has a lot of power I mean not the

2:29:26actual player who just had sort of no lower body rotation whatsoever but like the fictional Tammy uh huh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a very well-rounded player so all right well I still personally feel like buddy is the right choice but I know that I know that Tammy like I understand the Tammy choice which is why I wrote down what I wrote down why I also understand the buddy choice who do I most want to know is probably buddy and like who do I most want to touch is definitely buddy I want to give that dog a nice pat yeah yeah so I want to dump him oh yeah uh what about your favorite performance well I felt like it would be unfair to say buddy and also like slightly mean because you know like the acting is it's not like the acting's atrocious all around here it's it's not by any means it's just it's all it has to be in this movie and I'm gonna pick a Molly Hagen as the as Coach Crenshaw I just I felt like she was grounded and like very present and was

2:30:35not one of the like broader performances but provided like a nice little bit of like adult like I don't know empathy that that I thought was nice and also useful um yeah I thought she did a good job I do think that um dog funk who played the announcer male man Phil was also like really incredible so I want to give him props too but I'm gonna I'm gonna give it to Molly yeah I think I enjoyed Molly Hagen in the role of the coach the most but I think that Cynthia Stevenson as the mother had more moments where I was impressed with what she was doing whether it was because I was like that's a terrible line but you delivered it like a person or you're like oh that's a like actually lovely emotional moment or whatever so in the interest of diversity I'll go ahead and pick Cynthia Stevenson nice but yeah also liked Molly Hagen so thank you so much for joining us for

2:31:37our epic review of airbud colon seventh inning fetch oh yeah believe it or not I feel like there's probably plenty of stuff that we actually both left on the table here oh I know there's a lot of things particularly in storytelling that I was like yeah I don't need yeah oh um if you enjoyed this podcast please rate and review us on Spotify and on Apple and to give us a review we just noticed that we got a new review it's actually not so new but we just noticed it yeah it's very very nice but it's lovely uh between wavelength and Addison writes smartly executed podcast not only do I enjoy the deep dive analysis of my favorite baseball movies plus some films new to me by two hardcore baseball fans and certifiably nerdy in the best possible way professional actors but I also love listening to the conversations between these two people who so clearly listen to and love each other oh I wasn't expecting that last part but I am grateful every time that it's

2:32:38there thank you it's really lovely it's really really kind thank you very much thanks for saying that I listen to Eric yeah yeah I like to think that I do but sometimes I don't think I listen well enough I think it's a goal we both try to keep in mind indeed indeed so it is so next time we are going to be talking about the movie the phrase that is frequently bandied about in this particular household you'd think we were great fans of the film if you had been eavesdropping with a little glass on the door for the amount of times that we have said it damn Yankees and yet it will be a first for me I've never seen it either yeah I feel it's one of those like secret chains is a person who's like you know Ben connected to the theater for a very long time I feel like there is some expectation that classic titles even in musical theater when one is not a musical theater actor you you come across people that are like you seriously don't know that and I do not

2:33:45but when you hear my voice next I shall know we will know we will have the knowledge yeah I hadn't seen so many of these movies and I sort of feel like movies and theater it's equally my business I mean as is the same for you so yes I don't feel more shame for not having seen damn Yankees than I did for not having seen any number of the movies that were in this particular podcast but if you would like to find us on the internet between now and then my Twitter handle is at Ellen underscore a dare at Instagram I'm at Ellen a dare G I have already joined hive I'm Ellen a dare there I'm currently waiting for post and hopefully by the time that you hear this I will have figured out how to join mastodon it's just it's the holidays and it's so busy anyway so please I hopefully I will be on all of those things by the time you're hearing this

2:34:45and I am at Eric guilty on some of those things but I'm kind of waiting on the mastodon and post stuff because it's new and I'm confused and scared yeah I'm a technological octogenarian I think that people severely underestimate the hatred and unwillingness that I have to interface with any kind of new technology and I think when I'm genuinely an octogenarian should I get that far God willing people will be like oh like you just don't get it because you're you know sort of like grand person aged and I'm going to be like no I was born this way I never liked it I never got it I'm so tired from my travels from friendster to my space and across the plains I wasn't on either of those things they weren't around long enough for me to be like oh I guess I got to do this yeah yeah I got I got to wait before I get further along that hamster wheel indeed because if if you stop

2:35:52running then you just got like a nice place to sit yeah it's true yeah I should perhaps just take this opportunity to not need to be on social media as much yeah hamster wisdom hamster wisdom squeak squeak ham squeak squeak what Latin I love it that's actually squirrel from the Emperor's New Groove perhaps my favorite Disney movie strange take all right thanks for joining us for this book you for me podcast and we will talk to you next time on take me into the fall game bye guys